Collection is open for research.
Marjorie McDonald, nee Campbell, was born in Akron, Indiana, in 1898. She and John McDonald were married before the couple relocated to Oregon. She attended college in Oregon, and worked as a teacher in Portland. She traveled to England to study Russian, and when she returned to Portland, she became the first Russian language high school teacher in the United States. After her retirement in 1963, she became a painter. In 1970, she began creating collages using her own technique of mixing paint and turpentine to color rice paper. She taught this technique to patients at a hospital in Portland where she was a volunteer. She died in 1995.
Some of Marjorie McDonald's artworks can be seen online at
Oral history interview with Marjorie McDonald, by Edna Kovacs, SR 6502, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This oral history interview with Marjorie McDonald was conducted by Edna Kovacs in Corvallis, Oregon, on October 21, 1989. Kovacs begins the interview by presenting McDonald with a birthday present and by showing photographs to McDonald. McDonald then discusses her family background and early life in Indiana and Portland, Oregon, including her education. She also discusses her love of fishing. She reads and discusses some of her poetry. She talks about living in London, England, to learn Russian and discusses teaching Russian to high school students in Portland. She speaks about her collage artwork, describes some of her pieces, and talks about her art techniques. Kovacs then talks about some of her students and closes the interview by further discussing her own artwork.
Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA,