Career
In August 1989, McDonnell shared an art exhibition in Belfast with her uncle Hector McDonnell, when the News Letter commented "An Antrim artistic family if ever there was one." She had a solo exhibition at the Kerlin Gallery in Belfast in March 1991, with a theme of sheep farming. This was reported to have been "hugely successful".
A solo exhibition in May 1992 with a fishing theme had the title "Trawling for Prawns from Ardglass". An exhibition in 1993 at One Oxford Street, Belfast, of fifty landscapes and portraits, was called "Familiar Faces 10am to 4pm and Favourite Places".
McDonnell went on to launch her children's book career with I Love Animals (1994), published by Walker Brothers.
This was followed by I Love Boats (1995).
Since then, she has published many children's books and collaborated with authors and poets, including illustrating two new editions of books of verse by Ted Hughes. Her illustrations for the Ted Hughes collection The Cat and the Cuckoo show Nethercott at Iddesleigh in North Devon, a Farm for City Children, near where Hughes lived.
In 2001, McDonnell had a joint exhibition at the Cavehill Gallery, Belfast, with Malcolm Bennett titled "At Times Charming and at Times Childlike". The Belfast Telegraph noted that they were "two very different artists with totally divergent work".
After a long intermission, McDonnell's Out of a Dark Winter's Night was published by Thames and Hudson in March 2020, when for the book launch the original oil pastels were exhibited at Abbott and Holder's gallery in Museum Street, Bloomsbury.
