Mary McDonald

Muralist makes the most of the indoors.


By Mary McInerney
Photography by Craig Merrill



Charlton Heston may have done it in the movie that portrayed Michelangelo, but the Italian Renaissance artist wasn't really lying on his back the entire four years he spent painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

In fact, Michelangelo went to great lengths to describe how uncomfortable it was to stand atop towering scaffolding and paint the massive mural. "My belly's pushed by force beneath my chin. My beard toward heaven. I feel the back of my brain upon my neck ... My brush, above my face continually, makes it a splendid floor by dripping down," he wrote in a sonnet.

And he included a doodle of himself standing, bent into an S shape.

Some 500 years later, muralist Mary McDonald paints ceilings the same way the great Michelangelo did. And she can feel his pain. "You stand, leaning back, looking up," she explains. "You have to, because the perspective changes if you are lying down."

McDonald, 53, a native of Alameda, has painted ceilings throughout the Bay Area, using the technique of trompe l'oeil, which means "trick of the eye." The trick is making a two-dimensional painting appear three-dimensional. Trompe l'oeil dates back to the ancient Romans, who used simulated columns and windows painted on the walls to decorate their villas.

Look up at a ceiling McDonald painted, and you feel as if the room has been opened to the sky above, with wispy clouds and patches of blue--and even a balustrade that gives the illusion of a balcony above you. But she doesn't just paint ceilings. She does wall murals and whole rooms, too. In one Suisun Valley home, she painted an opulent bedroom in lemon trees, vineyards and even draperies--all created from oil paint.

Sometimes, after stooping on scaffolding beneath ceilings and creating swirling masterpieces, McDonald will then set up shop in the smallest room of the house and paint an impressive bathroom. Clearly, she is an artist who is comfortable in tight quarters.

At The Fat Lady, a restaurant and bar in Oakland, McDonald worked with owner Patricia Rossi, also of Alameda, to embellish the restrooms. Their inspiration? That the restaurant had once housed a brothel. It led to some pretty naughty paintings on the bathroom walls. Both McDonald and Rossi giggle when they talk about the murals. "The men's room is a little more risque," says Rossi. "It has ladies who are unclothed. Young boys always enjoy going in there."

In the ladies' room, there is a skylight. After McDonald finished painting the room, complete with ladies in varying states of undress, Rossi said she felt it "needed a sense of humor." So McDonald added the face of a peeping Tom in the skylight. For many customers, it can take a minute before they realize he's not real. "We always tell people to look up," says Rossi.

Adding to the fun at The Fat Lady, neither of the restrooms is labeled, so customers "have to talk to each other" to find their way. "They have become conversation pieces," says Rossi, whose family has owned the restaurant 35 years.

Growing up in the West End of Alameda in the house she lives in today, McDonald says she has always been interested in art. McDonald transforms walls into works of art.

McDonald started painting murals while she was a student at St. Joseph Notre Dame High School. Her boyfriend's father had a boom truck, and he convinced her to go up in truck's bucket and paint some outdoor murals. It wasn't the height that scared her -- McDonald was way too shy and unprepared to deal with the business of selling her work. And so, she embarked on a college career and earned an art degree from Cal State Hayward (now Cal State East Bay) and a graduate degree in print making from the San Francisco Art Institute. While there, she worked at Amsterdam Art in Berkeley, where she met her husband, Russell Connacher, who today works for UC Berkeley, in information technology.

Ten years ago, McDonald started painting murals again. She charges $400 a day for her work, and an entire wall mural or ceiling can cost more than $3,000. Most recently, McDonald painted murals in the Santa Clara Avenue dental office of Dr. George E. Calandri. Now when patients are in his dental chair, they have something to look up at.

Often, too, McDonald is called upon to transform newly constructed houses into homes with instant character. The arched doorway that leads to a wine cellar in one new home was transformed with trompe l'oeil painted stonework that makes it look as though the wine cellar belongs in an old stone castle. In an Alamo powder room, the homeowners look out over a painted balcony created by McDonald to trompe l'oeil vineyards and rolling hills.

"It's a collaboration with clients," explains McDonald, who has exhibited her portraits at San Francisco's Bucheon Gallery and Museum of Modern Art.

"They tell me what they want, and I sketch out a drawing in color of what it's going to look like." After that, she scales the drawing to the wall or ceiling size and sketches it in charcoal. The painting, in oil, can take a few weeks, with McDonald working 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., most days.

According to Rossi, she had a simple idea to spruce up the bathrooms when she hired McDonald. "I didn't like the tile," she says. "And, Mary made the tile beautiful."