Doug Bosley

Douglas Bosley graduated from Western Washington University in 2009 with a bachelor’s of fine arts in printmaking and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2012.  His work has been included in numerous shows nationally and internationally in Australia, China, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand.  He is the recipient of an Illustrator of the Future award and was awarded first place in the National Society of Arts and Letters National Competition in Printmaking for 2013.  From 2013-2015 he was honorary fellow and artist in residence in the Forest lab at the Department of Bacteriology at the UW-Madison.   In addition, his work is held by several collections including the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Art, the Museum of Texas Tech University, the Southern Graphics Council Print Collection and Archives and the Wisconsin Union Art Collection.

I use detailed imagery and dynamic lighting to lure viewers into a narrative world of my construction. Mezzotint is my primary medium and follows the rich history of printmaking for broadcasting socially relevant content. My work imagines a future version of earth where the familiar environment has been eclipsed by engineered ecosystems and mechanical creations that have run amok.

Central to this fiction are colonies of micro-robots called Auxons. The joyous and curious nature of these ‘creatures’ plays counterpoint to  a more serious investigation of the conditions that have produced them and the world they have inherited.

Auxon means ‘growth,’ and refers to a specific kind of self-replicating system of robots that reproduces exponentially until it reaches a critical mass.  Once that is achieved, the actions of many individuals working together can perform tasks that previously would have been inconceivable, like energy collection and carbon capture.  While this suggests great things can happen by working together, it also reflects the realities of global and environmental citizenship, in which small and seemingly benign actions at the individual level can aggregate billions of times and have dramatic effects upon the entire biosphere.

I avoid anything too fantastical in my work, focusing instead upon what is physically real and possible.  What my work proposes is an alternate history and future timeline with roots in the physical laws and scientific discourse.  It suggests that we are agents who can affect real change in the world and must claim responsibility for our actions.

Prints Available By Doug Bosley

See more of Doug's work at dougbosley.com