About
Rachael Jane MacDonald BA(Hons) MA
Rachael is a textile & mixed media artist based in the inspiring Scottish Highlands.
Her work is rooted in an appreciation of nature and led by natural forms, textures, patterns and materials. Scottish folktales and old superstitions inform her current work. Folktales give a sense of how people used to experience their world: as a layered and symbolic shifting place imbued with a sense of possibility and otherness. Rachael draws her visuals from a mindful engagement with nature – layering colours, marks and pigments in a reflective and intuitive way to encapsulate the sense of otherworldliness held within folktales. She works with natural dyes and materials using a meditative slow stitch process.
Her Textiles Masters project explored the potential for sensory interactive textiles to be therapeutic through the medium of storytelling.
Rachael has exhibited her work in the Dundas Gallery, Patriothall Gallery, Whitespace Gallery, The Saatchi Gallery, Alchemist Gallery, the Strathpeffer Art Fair and the Nairn Book and Arts Festival.
Her background is in theatre costume where she graduated with a 1st class degree from Edinburgh College of Art. She worked for a number of years in theatre and film before launching her own atelier fashion label. Notable projects include designing and making for Sarah Brightman's world tours and designing for a production of Dracula with makers for The Hobbit, Anna Karenina and Crimson Peak.
Rachael is a lecturer at the University of the Highlands and Islands. She has years of experience teaching independently and in collaboration with galleries, museums, and organisations exploring varied mediums and subject areas. She possesses a distinction in a Teaching Qualification for Further Education.