McDonald was a visual artist, mainly a painter (although he didn't use a paintbrush until he was 31),[6] for around 25 years before he started making films, from around 2017.[1]
His works have been avidly collected and exhibited internationally, including a 2007 London exhibition which showed his work after painting an Antarctic expedition with the Mawson's Huts expedition.[6] He returned to Antarctica in 2008 and 2009 as an artist in residence for Aurora Expeditions.[3] He is renowned for his landscapes and still life paintings.[6]
In 2020, McDonald's portrait of Kurdish Iranian writer and journalist and former Manus refugee, Behrouz Boochani, was selected for the People's Choice Award[9][10]
In 2016, McDonald became interested in human rights and refugee issues after travelling across the Greek islands (including Leros, where he had lived a couple of decades earlier) to see how the local communities dealt with the huge numbers of asylum seekers who had arrived in 2015 and 2016 via the Mediterranean Sea, mainly from Syria via Turkey. He was struck by the more humane way that the Greeks treated these huge numbers of migrants, compared with the Australian Government's treatment of the relatively few who had arrived by boat in Australian territorial waters.[5]
McDonald established a social justice project called Howling Eagle, which advocates for humane treatment and raises public awareness of asylum seekers. The project began releasing videos on YouTube in 2018 under the title "Philoxenia", which is Greek for "extending hospitality and friendship to the stranger".[1]
McDonald was ambassador for World Vision'sKidsOffNauru Campaign and is on the Sydney Committee for Human Rights Watch Australia and Asia.[4]
In 2019, McDonald's 13-minute short film Manus was released. It details the stand-off between the asylum seekers in the Manus Island detention centre and the authorities, which occurred at the end of 2017 around the time the detention facility was closed. In total, asylum seekers were held in the Manus Island detention centre for six years. The film was shot by Australian journalist Olivia Rousset and uses only clips from interviews with the men to create the narrative.[12] It includes a poem called "Manus Poem" written and narrated in FarsibyBehrouz Boochani, a prominent Kurdish Iranian former asylum seeker held on Manus Island.[1]
