He was the first painter to exhibit abstract art in Vancouver, and throughout his life he championed Canadian avant-garde artists at home and abroad.
[5][3] After being recruited by Charles Hepburn Scott, Macdonald moved to Canada in 1926 to become a professor at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts.
[6] He became well-known and respected as a teacher at art colleges in Canada at Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto.
The sea has solidity and transparency, cruelty and tenderness, joy and terror, cunning and friendship, all included in visual observation.
There, in 1946, he met Calgary artist Marion Nicoll, who was hired to teach the summer program, and exerted a profound influence on her work by introducing her to automatic drawing and watercolour.
[5] Through his paintings, encouraged by Clement Greenberg,[9] he sought to convey abstract matters such as space and time.