Kathleen Dugan was born and raised in Indiana with a brief stay in England when she was 3-5 years of age. She attended Indiana University Bloomington receiving her BA/BFA degree and was awarded Phi Beta Kappa there. From undergrad she went directly to grad school for her MFA at Yale School of Art. Her peer classmates include John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, Jessica Stockholder, Ann Hamilton and Julie Heffernen. After Yale she moved to New York City and worked at Parsons School of Design in the Admissions office. Her boss at the time was Tim Gunn, the now infamous Project Runway celebrity. Dugan has taught at several colleges and Universities including Parsons, Marian College, Franklin College, and Anderson University. Currently she is tenured at Anderson University. Dugan’s awards include a Lilly Scholars Award, several faculty grants from Anderson University, and a Ford Foundation Grant. Dugan has exhibited work in New York, Toronto, and Germany and has had solos exhibitions in Chicago as a member of the ARC gallery.

Dugan’s work focuses on the disability of autism spectrum disorder. Her portraits of children diagnosed with autism are both an attempt to raise awareness to a broader community, but also her own attempt at “facing “twins diagnosed with autism. Within these paintings she considers the many facets that autism portrays from the DSM-IV list of criteria, the sensory issues these children must cope with and the simple beauty and dignity these children evoke in their struggle to navigate in our social world. . As her daughter Hannah often says to her “People don’t understand how hard it is to have autism, ” Dugan ‘s hope and intent is through her paintings people will begin to see the “face” of autism, i.e. the real person, not just the diagnosis.