This is an autobiographical exhibition. It illustrates childhood fears and dreams, and the challenges and satisfactions of maturity. Although it is a personal journey everyone will find an episode, idea or detail to which they can relate. If not, at least they can engage with fine works of art and appreciate MacDonald's strong drawing skills and her use of monochrome in painting.

This is a collection of mostly small, intimate works executed in tones of either blue, violet or purple. Larger works involve different hues of blue with warm accents of orange. This minimal palette gives the whole exhibition a sense of calm and unity. Each image is a page from the book of the artist's life that illustrates how she overcame hardships by holding on to dreams, and how she grew in spirit to survive, to soar. What allows the public to relate so easily to these works is the seemingly 'simple' style in which the complex aspects of life are rendered. Here we see the girl and the woman, the fears and the comforts, the past and the present, all beautifully represented by figures, symbolic birds, small landscapes tucked in the corners of the canvas, large enfolding hands, and trails of cultural motifs.

The bird appears, large or small, in every painting. Sometimes it is white and full of hope, other times dark and frightening. It may be the defined subject of the work as in Loneliness where it curls up in the crook of a tree like a small child in a big chair; or it can be just a curving line that grows into the rounded head or shoulder of a wing to transform idea into imagery. This is seen in Stories in Colour where the artist sits with her back against a tree, sketching the bush.

In Two Families we see a woman protectively hugging four birds, her children perhaps as each is a different colour blue. Behind her stands her ancestors, both human and spirit. This is a well composed painting with a strong single message; the past is a part of the the present and will continue into the future within our progeny. Other images offer layers of interpretation that when peeled back by each viewer reveal something from their own experiences that parallel the artist's. For example Together We Fly shows a child and 'dolls' mounted on the back of a fast flying bird suggesting the girl's imagination taking flight. Then again it could be seen as a woman and her family finding freedom. In any case it communicates a sense of release and joy.

Two works had me walking from one end of the gallery to the other and back again. The sketch-like drawing of a child's face with it's wide-eyed wonder, in Nature Lesson, and the finely painted woman's face of Window of Confusion which is a picture of strength and serenity. Each speaks, but you'll have to see them for yourself to discover what they have to say.