McDonald has always worked creatively, but it wasn’t until a family holiday, about 15 years ago, that she took the decision to make space to create. 

“I was having a conversation with my children about being fulfilled as humans,” McDonald said. “They asked me what I did to be fulfilled. 

“I had been so busy with my head down and bum up with four kids that I hadn’t had time to consider it.”

After the holiday, she hit the local art supply shop and has not “stopped since then”. 

“But from that time onward I made purposeful time for me to create,” she said. 

McDonald is an abstract landscape painter. 

“I am unashamedly a landscape painter,” McDonald said. “I am completely influenced by my environment around me. 

“I do like the idea of playing with perspective, and I enjoy abstract processes.

“I keep returning to a horizon view and I like to overlay with an aerial view as well. I play around with exploring my landscape in different ways.”

McDonald draws on her memory of the places she has been to create works. 

“I do have motifs and themes I revisit,” she said. “I go over and over again.

“I crossed the Nullarbor when I was a child and that has had a profound influence on me, and I think it is where these horizons and lateral scenes that keep reoccurring in my work come from. 

“The colours and that experience of crossing with my family and spending a bit of time out there keeps coming back in my work. 

“Also, I’m such a Newcastle girl – the harbour and my local surrounds – the harbour, beaches and that industrial landscape with the natural landscape is something that features a lot. 

“The industrial elements that rise out of the harbour intrigue me,” she said. “I keep revisiting that over and over again.” 

McDonald will hold a solo exhibition this year. Date to be announced. Follow her:  instagram.com/sallymcdonaldart