Statement
My work is an exploration of memory, imagination and the passage of time in abstract landscapes where chaos and order are inseparable and indistinguishable. Interwoven. Like nature. I try to create worlds that don't exist anywhere else and are not a reflection of real images in our world... even though representational images and fragments can emerge from my work through the intensely layered process I employ.Every piece begins with a loose idea or recollection… 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 even though it may appear so. I use direct, deliberate application of pigment to create the rhythmic patterns, forms and textures that characterize my work.
Influences, Inspirations, Mentors
Internationally renowned sculptor John Sisko was a lifelong friend and inspiration. We met in college working at a horrible, racist club in Seattle and found a mutual interest in art, philosophy, and withering, caustic conversation that lasted decades, until John left this mortal coil in 2016. But his genius remains in his brilliant work an in the memories of so many of his friends and colleagues.
Reed Merrill was a dear friend and mentor who taught me more about art, literature and music than every teacher and professor I’ve ever had combined. He was by profession a professor and internationally recognized literary scholar. The lovely house he shared with his equally brilliant spouse Diane was full of original art by Northwest masters he had befriended and quietly supported for many years. Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Clayton James, Merle Martinson, Paul Havas, and many others. Reed took me on his “rounds” visiting the studios and homes of so many of these artists in the 1980’s and 1990’s and that was an education that just can’t be bought. Lucky me.
Artists who have influenced me are too many to cite. Personal favorites who have influenced how I look at art and the world… I’ll check off a few of the old guard here just for fun. Turner. Klee. Miro. Giacometti. Redon. Rodin. Schiele. Klimt. Klint. So many others. And they’re all on Instagram, even if they died centuries before photography was invented.
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. Painting was a 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. After producing nearly a hundred canvases in the past year and being selected for several juried national exhibitions, he is shifting his professional focus to art. Len lives in the Salish Sea region of North America with his spouse and daughter. Exhibitions
Curated:
2025 - 23rd National Fine Art Show, Gig Harbor, Washington, USA. Juror: Cable Griffith, Art Department Chair, Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University.
2026 - 19th Annual Collective Visions Gallery Show, Bremerton, Washington, USA. Juror: Christian Waguespack, Curator, Director of Curatorial Affairs, Museum of Northwest Art
