Statement
I paint to create tableaux that are contradictory: strange, familiar, archaic, contemporary, dissonant, harmonious, hopefully beautiful… a synthesis of decades of observation and memory expressed in color, form, shadow and light. My work is a voyage across the landscapes of memory and dreams, navigating intersections where chaos and order converge.
Every piece begins with a loose idea… a place, a shape, an object, a pattern, a texture, or a combination of colors. I then proceed through a methodical process of layering paint with a panoply of tools - fabric, canvas, brushes, paper, pastry bags, fingers, hands, cardboard, sticks, et al. I do not employ dripping or splashing techniques. I use direct, deliberate application methods to create the rhythmic patterns, forms and textures that characterize my work.
Each composition is a negotiation between structure and fluidity, with layered, textural, kinetic fields that pulse with motion. I seek to create immersive environments—windows through which viewers can reflect upon their own memories, dreams, and the fluid boundaries of the ever-changing world we inhabit.
About
Lenville O’Donnell was born in a small town in central California and spent his youth living in Morocco, Italy, Germany, Spain, France and the U.S. He earned a B.A. in History from the University of Washington with a minor in Art History.His passion for art began the day he visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence at the age of eight. Len was immersed in art, architecture and music by his brilliant, artistic, insatiably curious mother Mary Ellen O’Donnell, who took him to every great museum, monument and building she could in Morocco, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Austria and Germany before he was a teenager.His main career was as a producer, director and writer in the film and television industry in Los Angeles. Inspired by the art he was exposed to in youth, painting was an occasional hobby from kindergarten onward. Len messed around with odd methods of applying watercolor, gouache, and other mediums for years but was never completely satisfied with the results. He began painting abstracts with acrylics in 2025 and discovered a technique and style that inspired him to continue in earnest.Len lives in the Puget Sound region of Washington State with his spouse and daughter. Exhibitions
Curated:
2025 - 23rd National Fine Art Show (Cable Griffith, Juror), Gig Harbor, Washington, USA
2025 - 19th Annual Collective Visions Gallery Show (Christian Waguespack, Juror), Bremerton, Washington, USA (Invited, show January 2026)
