Meet the Beatles Artist

by Max Gray   
Posted December 21, 2007

Every morning, Shannon MacDonald’s alarm clock plays “A Hard Day’s Night.” The computer room in her home in Howell is littered with sketches, clippings and open photography books like Simon Wells’s The Beatles: 365 Days. Paul and John are framed on the walls of the downstairs den. But the main attraction on MacDonald’s magical mystery tour is inside a barn studio overlooking a small pond nearby.

“I’m working on Bangladesh right now,” she says, opening the door to the barn loft. An airbrush portrait of George Harrison stands next to a huge rendition of John Lennon with a colorful macaw parrot perched on his shoulder. “The macaw is from the White Album era,” she adds. A television flashes images of The Concert for Bangladesh.

She signs her work simply as Shannon. The developers of the Hard Day’s Night Hotel, a four-star venture under construction in Liverpool, originally contacted Shannon in the late ’90s after seeing her Beatles paintings on display at a fan art show in Connecticut. They said Shannon, who uses textile paints with an electric eraser and an airbrush custom-made for her by a company in Oregon, was the best they had ever seen. In February of last year she signed a contract to provide almost 200 separate portraits for the Beatles-themed hotel, slated for grand opening in October. Last month she reached the halfway point.

“I get constantly asked, ‘what number are you up to,’” she says. “It’s crazy. It’s a lot of pressure but I love my work. This is the time that I have and I’m going to make sure to get it done.”

Shannon’s original pieces for the Hard Day’s Night Hotel are currently valued at about $80,000 each. “But I don’t keep them around the house,” she says. The moment they get finished, “boom, they’re out the door.”

Since her very first multi-media (airbrush, electric eraser and hand paints) portrait of John Lennon earned a blue ribbon at a Beatlefest art contest in the early ’90s, the Lakewood native has seen an explosion of interest in her work. Donald Trump hired her to paint a 24-foot-long mural for Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. Rosie O’Donnell asked her to do personal portraits of Tom Cruise and Barbara Streisand. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler invited her to a motorcycle show on the deck of the USS Intrepid in the Hudson Bay. She even designed a postage stamp for the 20th anniversary of the original Rocky film. The stamp made appearances on Leno, Letterman and Good Morning America. She is currently too busy to appear at this month’s celebration in Secaucus.

These days it is important to stay focused. Her barn studio in the woods is a great place to relax and let the creativity flow. And the alarm clock?

“Some people would get tired of it,” she says. “But I’ve got to say, it really doesn’t bother me.