[1] Oulton was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire in 1953 to an Irish Catholic family, her father was in the Royal Air Force.
Growing up, Oulton learned the violin, and believes that if she had been born in London, she would have been a professional musician.
[2] Inspired by the works of Henry Moore and Morris Louis, Oulton studied at Saint Martin's School of Art in the late 1970s before going on to the Royal College of Art for three years and graduating in 1983.
Oulton's first solo show was the following year, in Gimpel Fils Gallery,[2] which was "highly praised"[3] before becoming an artist-in-residence in Melbourne.
[2][7] A number of Oulton's later works use multiple repeated images, often with slight variations between the repetitions.