Ross-shire based Rachael Jane MacDonald began her career at art college, completing a degree in Performance Costume. Years of designing and making for theatre and working as a designer for her own fashion label led her to realise her love was really for textiles and she returned to complete her MA in Textiles.She has since been evolving as a textile artist and painter, whilst lecturing at UHI, Inverness.
Scottish folktales, superstitions and beliefs inform her current work. These narratives give a sense of how people used to experience their world; as a multi-dimensional 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, rust dyes, printmaking, embroidery, gold leaf and cyanotype.