[1][2] MacPherson was regarded as one of Australia's most respected contemporary artists whose work ranged from texts, drawings, paintings and room-scale installations.
[4] After he had his first exhibition in the 1970s, he furthered his artistic education after being awarded several grants from the Visual Arts Board, which took him to Europe and the United States where he worked in the Greene Street studio in New York.
[4] A major retrospective of MacPherson's work was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney and Perth's Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2001, curated by Trevor Smith.
[4] This included one of MacPherson's most iconic works "1000 Frog Poems: 1000 Boss Drovers ('Yellow Leaf Falling') For HS 1996-2014" which consisted of a series of 2400 ink and pencil portraits that paid tribute to Australian drovers.
[2][4][7] MacPherson has also been included in several biennales and several major international exhibitions including the São Paulo Art Biennial in 2002, the 2007 Den Haag Sculptuur in the Netherlands and the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates in 2009.