By this time, he had developed his simplified treatment of racing drivers and the female figure where faces were depicted in a generalised way that could not identify the subject. In particular, he produced work with young and sexually confident women in alluring poses. His repeated and mirrored shapes appear like stills from a filmstrip with the resulting image having a strobe effect in slow motion. As with Andy Warhol, the repetition is a way of establishing a certain distance from things, which in Warhol’s case could often lead to a mechanical coldness. But Donaldson’s work was tilted more towards pleasure and the celebration and excitement of sexual liberation.

Marco Livingstone, the art historian wrote of his work and his contemporaries: “A startling characteristic of British Pop was the speed and confidence with which many of the artists discovered their language and subject matter at a very early age. Donaldson whose first boldly simplified, exuberantly colourful, large scale and sexy Pop canvases were created in 1962 when he was just 23, is no exception.” 

In 1964, he was one of twelve young artists selected to show in The New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery which included Derek Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and Bridget Riley. Just like Hockney, Donaldson then went to live and work in Los Angeles for two years from 1966. It had a strong impact on his work, particularly the clear and vivid Californian light, which shows in his subsequent work of flat areas of saturated colour. 

Just like his fellow pop artists Eduardo Paolozzi and Gerald Laing, later in his career Donaldson turned more to sculpture, using a variety of materials and media. His most famous piece is the giant Buddha-like head of Alfred Hitchcock in the courtyard of the Gainsborough Picture studios, London.

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