Revealing a matter/history through a process of material investigations lies at the heart of my practice. I live and work in North Devon, near the Bristol Channel, where the sense of place and time weaves its way into my work. I’m interested in how a process of making can describe a morphology of matter-information as an ebb and flow of forces impacting the work, using events as a starting point from the past and finding their way to the present. My practice engages with digital and physical media across drawing, print, sculpture and site.
I studied Sculpture at Winchester School of Art and received my Postgraduate in Fine Art from the Royal Academy of Arts Schools in 2002. My role as Programme Leader for Creative Arts has given me an overview of students diverse approaches to studying at the OCA. It’s exciting to see each student’s unique creative voice emerge from their studies. Before joining the OCA, I have been a tutor and assessor at Byam Shaw School of Art in London. I have also been a technical assistant to several leading artists, including Sir Anthony Caro.
The morphology of surface-structure and ideas are central to my current practice. In a catalogue essay written by David Lillington in 2008 (Doug Burton and Nicky Hirst, Morphology) Lillington describes my working process as “…problem solving, ways of thinking, ‘the idea of the interconnectedness of all things’ – the architecture of thought as much as the architecture of matter and space – are at the heart of his work. They constitute its real subject.”
You can find out more about me through my website www.dougburton.net or on social media https://www.instagram.com/
