SARAH MCDONALD | EXPRESSIVE LANDSCAPES
Please click on the images below in the gallery to view the full photo
Monday 12 – Friday 16 January 2026
Sarah is an expressive landscape painter focusing on capturing light, colour and texture in her oil paintings. In this workshop we’ll talk to you about how to choose good composition and simplify and eliminate some of the detail. Using Acrylic paint, you will learn colour theory and how to use a limited palette, mixing your colours using mainly the Primary Colours. You will be shown how to create a variety of values to create depth, perspective, and light in the landscape.
Working from both photo references and painting outside in the landscape, you will explore a variety of ways to make expressive marks and apply your paint, using both brushes and palette knives making several small, fast and free dynamic paintings then building up your confidence to make a larger work. All levels
NOTE: If you are a confident oil painter, you can use your oil paints when we are outside Plein Air painting, but we will only be using Acrylics back in the studio due to lack of ventilation.
Sarah is an expressive landscape painter focusing on capturing light, colour and texture in her oil paintings. In this workshop we’ll talk to you about how to choose good composition and simplify and eliminate some of the detail. Using Acrylic paint, you will learn colour theory and how to use a limited palette, mixing your colours using mainly the Primary Colours. You will be shown how to create a variety of values to create depth, perspective, and light in the landscape.
Working from both photo references and painting outside in the landscape, you will explore a variety of ways to make expressive marks and apply your paint, using both brushes and palette knives making several small, fast and free dynamic paintings then building up your confidence to make a larger work. All levels
NOTE: If you are a confident oil painter, you can use your oil paints when we are outside Plein Air painting, but we will only be using Acrylics back in the studio due to lack of ventilation.
SARAH MCDONALD Bio
Website sarahmcdonald.com.au
Instagram sarahmcdonaldartist
With 20 years of experience as a professional artist who has exhibited her work all over Australia and overseas, South Australian artist, Sarah McDonald is now well known for richly textured and evocative Oil Paintings. McDonald is being recognised around Australia for her Landscapes painted in her signature technique using palette knives. In each painting, there is a quality that evokes an emotional response from every viewer as they re-tell their own story, stirred by memories and images of their own past. Each painting reflects Sarah’s ability to capture time and place, using her exaggerated light and colour to depict her subject matter. Her tactile landscapes are responses to her love or hiking and her connection with the places she might travel to.
In thick layers of oil paint, built up with brushes and palette knives, McDonald creates richly textured works inspired by the natural and urban environment.
Each painting reflects her ability to capture time and place, using her exaggerated light and colour to depict her subject matter. Her tactile and evocative landscapes are responses to her love of hiking and experiencing places she might travel to. Sarah’s very popular and well-known “Posie” paintings are a more contemporary take on the traditional ‘Still Life”. In each painting, there is a quality that evokes emotional responses from every viewer as they re-tell their own story, stirred by memories and images of their own past.
Sarah exhibits widely throughout Australia and her work can be found in commercial and private spaces where the rawness in her paintings forms a dynamic contrast against the apparent simplicity of modern society.
Instagram sarahmcdonaldartist
With 20 years of experience as a professional artist who has exhibited her work all over Australia and overseas, South Australian artist, Sarah McDonald is now well known for richly textured and evocative Oil Paintings. McDonald is being recognised around Australia for her Landscapes painted in her signature technique using palette knives. In each painting, there is a quality that evokes an emotional response from every viewer as they re-tell their own story, stirred by memories and images of their own past. Each painting reflects Sarah’s ability to capture time and place, using her exaggerated light and colour to depict her subject matter. Her tactile landscapes are responses to her love or hiking and her connection with the places she might travel to.
In thick layers of oil paint, built up with brushes and palette knives, McDonald creates richly textured works inspired by the natural and urban environment.
Each painting reflects her ability to capture time and place, using her exaggerated light and colour to depict her subject matter. Her tactile and evocative landscapes are responses to her love of hiking and experiencing places she might travel to. Sarah’s very popular and well-known “Posie” paintings are a more contemporary take on the traditional ‘Still Life”. In each painting, there is a quality that evokes emotional responses from every viewer as they re-tell their own story, stirred by memories and images of their own past.
Sarah exhibits widely throughout Australia and her work can be found in commercial and private spaces where the rawness in her paintings forms a dynamic contrast against the apparent simplicity of modern society.
