Laurie McDonald attended the Rhode Island School of Design in the early '70s. She was awarded fellowships to the National Center for Experiments in Television, an affiliate of KQED-TV in San Francisco, and to WNET's Experimental Television Lab in Manhattan. She was a founding member of Electron Movers, Research in the Electronic Arts, Inc., a Providence, R.I. video co-op in existence from 1974 through 1979. Also during that time, she danced with a ballet company in Rhode Island, and in early 1980 relocated to Houston, Texas, where she was Video Projects Director for the Southwest Alternate Media Project. She currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Laurie McDonald is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship and four American Film Institute/NEA Fellowships. Her video work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals nationally and internationally including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the New York Avant Garde Festivals in the 70s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Festival du Cinema, the Tokyo Video Festival, and the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. In addition to a BFA in film and video from the Rhode Island School of Design, she holds an MA in Literature from the University of Houston.