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Kate MacDonald

MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

PORTFOLIO: SELECTED WORK

Perception, Natural Systems and the Unstable Real

My work considers how perception, memory, technology and natural processes alter what we understand as real. Across digital collage, painting, moving image, projection and public art, I construct environments in which beauty and unease coexist, and where damaged, discarded or ordinary matter becomes a site of transformation.

DEBRIS 2017-2026

Debris brings together fragments of natural and human-made environments, removing them from their original contexts and allowing new relationships to emerge. The series established an ongoing interest in discarded matter, transformation and the instability of familiar forms. (Select collages from series.)

Digital collage by Kate MacDonald of grasses, twigs, garden debris and bird remains gathered into a dense floating mass against pale grey. 2017 Top Ten Artist Award from the Los Angeles Centre for Digital Art.

Debris #1, 2017
Digital collage

LACDA Award Winner, 2017

Digital collage by Kate MacDonald of a small bird enclosed by delicate looping white stems and green vegetation against a muted blue background.

Nest, 2024

Digital collage

Digital Collage by Kate MacDonald bare branches holding white flowers, translucent hanging forms, bird remains and a sculpted face against blue sky.

Flight is a Rare Gift, 2026

Digital collage

DO NOT BLOCK

A deteriorating street sign is stripped of its urban setting and placed against the wake of a moving boat. The work shifts a familiar directive into an uncertain space between object, fragment, warning and landscape.

Fragments of a weathered orange-and-white street sign reading “DO NOT BLOCK” suspended over deep blue water churned by a boat wake.

DO NOT BLOCK, 2026

Digital collage

DO NOT BLOCK displayed on a large digital billboard above Times Square in New York, surrounded by illuminated signs and city buildings.

Presented on the BEAST digital billboard in Times Square, New York, during NFT.NYC.

BUOY

A classical figure is reconstructed with marine markers and placed improbably upright at sea. Body, sculpture and navigational object collapse into a single form, leaving its identity deliberately unresolved.

Surreal digital collage of a fragmented classical human figure standing upright in open water, with red-and-white fishing floats hanging in place of its arms.

Buoy, 2026

Digital collage

ATLANTIS: THE OCEAN & THE ANGEL

A Collaboration for World Ocean Day 2021

A collaborative series of short animated collages created for World Ocean Day 2021 with artist and commercial scallop fisherman SearcherSunset, using photographs he took at sea. Documentary images of working life on the water become raw material for shifting, surreal environments, moving between observation, lived experience and invention.

Atlantis: The Catch

00:30

Atlantis: The Angel

00:13

Atlantis: The Deck

00:18

Atlantis: The Ascent

00:22

Atlantis: The Moon

00:14

Atlantis: The Net

00:12

Six short animated digital collages, 2021
The Catch · The Angel · The Deck · The Ascent · The Moon · The Net

ABALONE ASSEMBLAGES

These small assemblages move collage from the flat image into found marine objects. The shells become material, container and pictorial space, with fragments of the human body and manufactured objects embedded within their naturally iridescent interiors.

Iridescent abalone shell containing a collage of a raised human arm, a partially submerged face, metallic strips, chain and found objects arranged within the shell’s pearlescent interior.

Shower, 2026

Collage in abalone shell, found imagery and mixed media, 4 x 5 x 1.5"

Iridescent abalone shell containing a reclining fragmented human figure, dark circular forms and a small pearl arranged within the shell’s pearlescent interior.

Grotto, 2026

Collage in abalone shell, found imagery and mixed media, 4 x 5 x 1.5"

DEBRIS PAINTINGS, 2019-2021

These paintings extend the Debris series into scenes where domestic objects, tangled vegetation and accumulated garden matter begin to merge. Built from personal photographs, the works explore how familiar forms are altered by growth, decay and reclamation, becoming less fixed and more difficult to separate from the environments around them.

Painting of a turquoise upholstered chair partly engulfed by dense pink flowers and garden vegetation, with foliage pressing in around the seat and frame.

Chair with Camellias, 2021

Oil on canvas, 24 x 36"

Painting of a dense mound of tangled green and brown vegetation beneath a pale sky, with layered branches, leaves and plant debris forming an irregular mass.

Fall of the Rebel Angels, 2019

Oil on canvas, 24 x 36"

ainting of a bright yellow upholstered chair surrounded and partly obscured by branches, wilting hydrangeas and dense garden growth.

Debris with Yellow Chair, 2020

Oil on canvas, 36 x 60"

SITE-RESPONSIVE LIGHT + PROJECTION

Light and projection extend the image into existing landscapes and architecture. These installations respond to the physical and ecological conditions of each site, using temporary systems and existing surfaces to alter how a place is experienced without imposing a permanent structure.

The Luminous Marsh, 2025
Projection mapping on hillside vegetation, Renfrew Ravine, Vancouver, Canada

Projected imagery moves across the hillside vegetation and uneven terrain of Renfrew Ravine, allowing the physical landscape and digital image to merge and shift together in moments of wonder and delight.

Intergalactic Wetlands, 2025
Light installation beneath a bridge
Renfrew Ravine, Vancouver, Canada
Kate MacDonald with 1895 Creative

Created beneath an urban bridge spanning a restored salmon stream, Intergalactic Wetlands was developed in collaboration with the 1895 Creative studio crew, led by MacDonald. The team designed a temporary system that allowed lights to be suspended from the bridge’s floor grate and quickly installed and removed without entering the habitat below. The site was revisited the following day to ensure that no debris remained in or around the stream.

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