Jerry Saltz at New York Magazine:
There is an intimate intensity to her work. Family Grief depicts McDonald’s father, who died in 1977, in his coffin, surrounded by family. “That same day I started using drugs,” she has said. Her father appears again in My Dad, My Hero (Will McDonald), a bust painted gold. He wears a camera around his neck — a tribute to his profession and calling — like a cross. Her father is both a source of anguish and a beaming emblem of pride.
So many of McDonald’s sculptures manage to convey the joy of inner transformation. The faces smile softly with their eyes closed, beatific in their bliss without falling into bathos. Glory (A Taste of Sweetness After Near Death) features McDonald in a luminous purple shawl, gazing heavenward. Beauty and the Peace shows a woman with a COVID mask falling from her face. Beauty in the Midst (Strength) is a three-faced being bedecked in pearls, radiating like a talisman. Mother’s Prayers echoes ancient votive statues in its compact elegance, while Covered With Love could be a folk version of a Renaissance-era Madonna and child.
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