Painter, stage designer and lecturer, born in Glasgow, where he continued to work. Macdonald trained as a marine engineer. Although he was mainly self-taught in art, completing only one session at Glasgow School of Art, Macdonald was a close friend of the painters J D Fergusson and Josef Herman, whose studio he took over in the early 1940s. It was in that decade that he began his association with the stage, directing and designing sets for Unity Theatre, later paintings sets for Scottish Opera. Macdonald was a versatile artist, sometimes working on a large scale. As well as painting abstracts, under the influence of Herman he painted a series of Expressionist pictures drawing on Glasgow working-class life, other paintings taking up themes such as Clowns and Cowboys which explored human behaviour.