In addition to documenting the emotion of a particular time and place, his paintings emphasize shifting patterns of light and shadow, as well as how colors change over distances.
He graduated from Penn Cambria High School in 1976, and went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania (BA, 1980), where he majored in art education.
Donoughe has worked in a variety of settings (from grave digger to art teacher to chicken catcher to landscaper).
[6][9] Several of Donoughe’s solo exhibitions and permanent installations feature 50 or more 9”x12” oil paintings on board hung close together, thereby creating a mural.
His work, Last Days of Steel, is in the permanent collection of the Duquesne Club, and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art has four Donoughe paintings.