Berlin-based artist Travis MacDonald draws inspiration from a wide range of interests including history, music, and world events; as well as everyday experience. His deliberately understated works feature a focused and often subdued palette, presenting subjects that range from the mundane to the absurd. Focusing predominantly on landscape and figurative painting, Travis MacDonald explores contemporary experience in atmospheric scenes that are suggestive of a greater narrative; referencing a range of art-historical precedents, including nineteenth-century romanticism.

Travis MacDonald was born in Bunnythorpe, New Zealand. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne in 2011 and has been exhibiting since 2009. He is the 2024 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize winner and has been awarded the Gary Grossbard Drawing Prize and the Lionel Gell Foundation Drawing Scholarship. His work was featured in the 2018 Melbourne Art Fair and in 2016 MacDonald’s work was exhibited in Painting. More Painting at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. He held his first solo exhibition at Niagara Galleries in December 2016 and has since exhibited in Berlin & Düsseldorf, Germany; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Zürich, Switzerland; Shanghai, China; Auckland & Wellington, New Zealand, London, UK; Stockholm, Sweden; and New York, USA.