Shona Macdonald

Shona Macdonald is a Scottish artist and academic. She is Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Early life and education

Macdonald was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. She received a BFA from the Glasgow School of Art in 1991 and an MFA in studio art from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996.

Academic career

Macdonald's teaching career began in 1998 at Illinois State University where she was Associate Professor of Art. She has been a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst since 2006

Art

Macdonald has been a practicing artist since the mid-1990s. Since 2013 she has made paintings of reflected rain in various guises. Between 2013 and 2017, her work exhibited metaphorical associations of inversion and reflection, such as states of disorientation. In 2018, she shifted focus by 'zooming in' closer, capturing raindrops circling onto groundwater. These newer paintings fracture previously legible images into ripples. Originating in drawing and photography, she engages with analog and digital, moving between collage, photocopies, projections, tracings, and drawing. She then uses paint diluted with stand oil and neo-megilp on neutral-toned linen creating a sheen that emulates the surface of water.
Macdonald makes drawings inspired by row coverings and cold frames dotted around the local Western Massachusetts landscape. She uses both small, intimate and large, physical scales in her work. Her current painting series are titled Sky on Ground and Ground Covering, where "ground" is both a noun and a verb: the earth beneath our feet, and the act of anchoring and situating a body in place.
Her work is influenced by many sources including the Kano School, particularly the work of Kano Tanyu, Latvian artist Vija Celmins, and Chicago artist and former professor Julia Fish.
Since 2008, Macdonald has been represented by Cynthia-Reeves Gallery in New Hampshire.

Selected exhibitions

;Solo

Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois University
Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico
Cleve Carney Museum of Art at the College of DuPage, Illinois

In May, 2021, she will open a solo show at the Zillman Art Museum at the University of Maine.
;Group

Duxbury Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, Massachusetts
Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago, Illinois
Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Glenbow Art Museum, Calgary, Alberta
McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Ontario
Chelsea Art Museum, New York, New York
Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science, Evansville, Indiana
Telfair Art Museum, Savannah, Georgia
Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois

Selected collections

Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, New Mexico
Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Iowa City, Iowa
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois
University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Selected reviews

Awards

Macdonald is the recipient of a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, a nominee for a Louis Comfort Tiffany award, and a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council finalist award.
She was the Roswell Artist-in-Residence in 2010–2011.

Other

Macdonald frequently presents her research in public lectures, symposia and panels, including at the College Art Association Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. She has been a visiting artist over fifty times including international venues such as Massey University, University of Alberta and University of Calgary, and McMaster University.

Personal life

Macdonald moved to New England in 2006. She lives and works in Massachusetts. She is married to Eric Salus and has three children: daughter, Isla Salus, and sons, Bram and Fenno Salus.