Statement
I paint to create tableaux that are strange, familiar, archaic, contemporary, dissonant, harmonious, original, contradictory and hopefully beautiful… a synthesis of six decades of observation and memory expressed in color, form, shadow and light.
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 his B.A. from the University of Washington studying primarily History and Art History.
His passion for art began the day he visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence at the age of eight. Lenville was immersed in art, architecture and music from birth by his brilliant, artistic, insatiably curious mother Mary Ellen O’Donnell, who took him to every great museum, monument and building she could in northwest Africa, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Austria and Germany before he was a teenager.
His primary career was as a producer, director and writer in the film and television industry in Los Angeles and Seattle.
Inspired by the countryside, cities, art, and architecture he saw during his juvenile peregrinations, painting was an occasional hobby from kindergarten onward. He began painting in earnest in 2025.
Lenville lives in the Puget Sound region of Washington State with his spouse Marie-Lorraine and daughter Lucie. Any white hairs embedded in paintings are courtesy of Arthur and Phoebe, their beloved, snow-capped Pyradors.
Mentors, Influences and Inspirations
Art and artists have been constant and essential elements of Lenville’s personal and professional life.
Len met John Sisko when they were students at the University of Washington in 1983. Their lifelong friendship centered around a love of art, philosophy, big words and good cheap wine. The profound artistry that brought Sisko international acclaim continues to inspire and motivate O’Donnell. Sadly, John no longer walks the earth.
The most important mentor in O’Donnell’s life was Reed Merrill, an internationally renowned literary scholar and patron of many influential regional artists. Reed took Len on many visits to the studios of many acclaimed Northwest artists including Guy Anderson, Alden Mason, Clayton James, Paul Havas, and Merle Martinson.
In the 1990’s Len worked part-time for his mother Mary Ellen, by then a C.P.A. with a bustling tax practice whose clients were primarily artists. Her little office on lower Queen Anne was bedecked with paintings, drawings and glass works by her clients William Morris, Bill Elston, Faye Jones, Sonja Blomdahl, Lynda Barry and many others.
The artists Lenville is most inspired by are too many to list. A handful of favorites from the past two centuries: Turner, Rodin, Redon, Klimt, Klee, Cocteau, Schiele, Man Ray, Miró, de Staël, Ivey, de Kooning, Mitchell, and Richter.
