Donnelly’s laborious process involves dying her fibers and hand painting patterns and images on the warp (perpendicular threads) before weaving the cloth. Created through a complex yet highly spontaneous process of weaving, staining, unweaving, and reweaving, Donnelly’s figurative works explore cloth’s intimate and universal material relationship with the body. She employs cloth as a literal reference to the human figure, drawing on sensory memories and the intimate connections we all have to cloth in its many domestic forms. Donnelly’s mural-sized weavings depict abstracted self-portraits, paradoxically presenting the figure on a medium traditionally used to conceal it.

Visual Arts Center of Richmond