Bio

Meara McDonald was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA to artist parents - a sculptural jeweler turned painter and a cinematographer/fine art photographer/musician. Her love to create began at a young age with the encouragement of her parents and the family point-and-shoot. One of her earliest body of works was a series of double-exposed portraits of her friends and neighbors’ heads superimposed on top of her Barbie's bodies. In high school, she could often be found shooting her friends’ bands at various venues around Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, which she continued in Santa Barbara when she left home to study photography and fine art. Two years later she moved back to LA where she received her BFA in Communication Arts from Otis College of Art and Design, with a semester study “inbroad” at MCAD, Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Meara has been published several times in Shots Magazine and has received honorable mention awards for some of her works in online exhibitions and gallery exhibitions around the United States. In 2024 she received a Silver Award from the reFocus Awards Black & White Photography contest in the Conceptual category for her self-portrait titled "Me, Myself & Eye." Her love of music has always been the biggest fuel to her creative fire, but her love for travel has taken her as far as Europe, Africa, and across America with her friends’ bands. Currently, she is focusing her eye on self-portraits and still-life photography.