Shona M Macdonald 

Shona M Macdonald is a fine artist and illustrator based in Sussex, UK.
Working across a range of media, her practice engages with themes of fragmentation, trauma, repair and reimagination. Through drawing, sculpture, printmaking and painting, she explores her subjects with a unifying aesthetic sensibility, centred on the use of natural materials, earth tones and a sepia palette. Her work suggests an underlying, unseen narrative—never fully explained, yet evocative of a journey through an imagined inner world. She is concerned with learning from and creating in harmony with the natural elements, favouring handmade processes that allow the inherent qualities of her chosen materials to speak for themselves. In doing so, she seeks to convey an energetic significance within the work and to connect the viewer both to the artwork itself and to the living world from which it emerged.

Her current practice explores the synergy between traditional myth, folklore and fairy tales, and the psychological processes involved in moving through trauma—particularly Jungian shadow work and the symbolism of animal presences found across global folk cultures. Within her process, she moves between drawn narrative and embodied sculpture, both arising from a shared thematic root. Sculptural forms emerge when a significant animal presence materialises as a focal point within the narrative, each animal serving as a marker for a facet of the human psyche.
The drawings exhibited here are selected from her Nigredo collection; a body of work reminiscent of a dark fairytale documenting a journey through a period of personal transformation. A more
extensive exhibition of the collection with accompanying sculptures will be on opening at Worthing Museum later in the year.
 

Shona M Macdonald works from Artspace 13 in Worthing. For information regarding future
exhibitions, sales, workshops and commissions, email shona@artspace13.com or follow
@shonamormacdonaldart on Instagram.