Marysia Donaldson

Marysia Donaldson was born in Warsaw and brought up in Scotland where she was educated. She studied at the renowned Glasgow School of Art, which counted amongst its past students many illustrious painters. Maryisa was taught there by her future husband, David Donaldson, The Queen's Painter and Limner in Scotland, and by Hugh Crawford RSA.

On leaving Art School she took up sculpture, but in time concentrated on painting. She has had numerous one-man exhibitions, both in the UK and abroad and has exhibited in many group shows including the Fine Arts Society, the Scottish Gallery, Fosse Gallery and the Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg.

She has been a regular exhibitor at the Royal Scottish Acadmy, Edinburgh, The Royal Glasgow Institute and The Royal Academy, London as well as at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. She is represented in the collection of HRH, The Duke of Edinburgh and in collections throughout Scotland, England, France, South Africa, Canada and the USA as well as in numerous corporate collections, including Hombros Bank, The MacFarlane Group, John Capel and Freshfields.

For the last few years, she has lived in the South of France where she enjoys a substantial following and has had many public and private one-man shows. A gallery at her home is open by appointment.

The Scottish artists' traditional affinity with the French and other continental counterparts is very evident in her work, while at the same time retaining a very special Scottish identity. Her pictures exude the joy of paint.

Reviewing Marysia Donaldson's 1985 Exhibition at the Macaulay Gallery in Scotland in the Glasgow Herald, Clare Henry wrote '...all have an authority of handling and observation that is a delight. Her paintings are full-bodied, painting for painting's sake, no political message, no dictatorial thesis. She simply glories in colour and shape...'

This same quality she now brings to the buoyant light of Provence and in portraiture she captures the very essence of her subjects while her still life paintings transform the ordinary into something quite special.

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