Born in 1957 in Cornwall, Ontario, Dugas earned a BFA from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and an MFA from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She taught printmaking as a sessional instructor at the University of British Columbia (1982) and silkscreen, lithography, etching, collagraph, and linocut at the University of Alberta (1982 - 1990). She has had more than 14 solo exhibitions and shown in over 250 national and international competitive exhibitions, winning eleven awards including: Jury Prize, 16th National Biennial of Graphic Art, Ljubljana (1985); Superior Class prize, Fifth International Print Biennial, Seoul, Korea (1986); and Best in Show (Digital New Media), 8th Ottawa School of Art International Miniature Print Biennale (2020).

In 2017, her work was featured in “LIGHT/MATTER; Art at the Intersection of Photography and Printmaking”, Grunewald Gallery of Art, Bloomington Indiana, USA; “The Looking Glass”, The Gallery of Alberta; “Masterpieces of Contemporary Canadian Printmaking” at ARDEL Gallery of Modern Art, Bangkok, Thailand. She lives and works in Alberta.

Today, influenced by Surrealism, Dadaism, and film and advertising imagery, photographer Dugas creates digital prints and monumental tableaus that explore nature, history, and anthropology inside a context of personal mythology.

Dugas says she wants “to create allegorical works which question notions of personal identity as well as our collective relationship with the natural world.”