Marcus O'Donnell
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Marcus O’Donnell is an artist, writer and academic working across traditional and digital print media. Working with abstract variations on the landscape and still life traditions, his practice investigates our troublesome representation of ‘nature’, all at once beautiful, monstrous and mysterious. Designed to evoke both outer and inner space, his images begin with close-focused photography of foliage, flowers and other elements of urban gardens. O’Donnell then constructs images from multiple originals, including photographs layered digitally with his own abstract cold wax paintings. The series, A strange appearance – variations, takes one photogravure key plate developed through these techniques and underlays a selection of different pigment prints to create variants which change in colour and form as the two layers intersect. This play with multiple variations speaks to both possibility and mutation: the open and the determined aspects of change. The title refers to what philosopher Timothy Morton calls the “strange strangeness” of perception in the age of the Anthropocene. Both through his imagery and his process of construction and deconstruction O’Donnell makes explicit the persistent trace of the human hand in the ‘natural’ in our precarious times. O’Donnell trained as an artist and exhibited in the 1990s and early 2000’s but has only recently returned to public art-making after a time concentrating on his academic career. In 2022 he was awarded 2nd prize in the Jack Wilkins Experimental Photography Prize. He has been a finalist in the Milburn Prize (2023); the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (2023); the Olive Cotton Award (2023) and the Tacit Still Life Prize (2022). He is actively involved in the printmaking community and is a member of the Baldessin Press & Studio Committee of Management, a not-for-profit access, education and editioning studio.
Marcus O’Donnell is an artist, writer and academic working across traditional and digital print media. Working with abstract variations on the landscape and still life traditions, his practice investigates our troublesome representation of ‘nature’, all at once beautiful, monstrous and mysterious. Designed to evoke both outer and inner space, his images begin with close-focused photography of foliage, flowers and other elements of urban gardens. O’Donnell then constructs images from multiple originals, including photographs layered digitally with his own abstract cold wax paintings. The series, A strange appearance – variations, takes one photogravure key plate developed through these techniques and underlays a selection of different pigment prints to create variants which change in colour and form as the two layers intersect. This play with multiple variations speaks to both possibility and mutation: the open and the determined aspects of change. The title refers to what philosopher Timothy Morton calls the “strange strangeness” of perception in the age of the Anthropocene. Both through his imagery and his process of construction and deconstruction O’Donnell makes explicit the persistent trace of the human hand in the ‘natural’ in our precarious times. O’Donnell trained as an artist and exhibited in the 1990s and early 2000’s but has only recently returned to public art-making after a time concentrating on his academic career. In 2022 he was awarded 2nd prize in the Jack Wilkins Experimental Photography Prize. He has been a finalist in the Milburn Prize (2023); the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (2023); the Olive Cotton Award (2023) and the Tacit Still Life Prize (2022). He is actively involved in the printmaking community and is a member of the Baldessin Press & Studio Committee of Management, a not-for-profit access, education and editioning studio.
Marcus O’Donnell is an artist, writer and academic working across traditional and digital print media. Working with abstract variations on the landscape and still life traditions, his practice investigates our troublesome representation of ‘nature’, all at once beautiful, monstrous and mysterious. Designed to evoke both outer and inner space, his images begin with close-focused photography of foliage, flowers and other elements of urban gardens. O’Donnell then constructs images from multiple originals, including photographs layered digitally with his own abstract cold wax paintings. The series, A strange appearance – variations, takes one photogravure key plate developed through these techniques and underlays a selection of different pigment prints to create variants which change in colour and form as the two layers intersect. This play with multiple variations speaks to both possibility and mutation: the open and the determined aspects of change. The title refers to what philosopher Timothy Morton calls the “strange strangeness” of perception in the age of the Anthropocene. Both through his imagery and his process of construction and deconstruction O’Donnell makes explicit the persistent trace of the human hand in the ‘natural’ in our precarious times. O’Donnell trained as an artist and exhibited in the 1990s and early 2000’s but has only recently returned to public art-making after a time concentrating on his academic career. In 2022 he was awarded 2nd prize in the Jack Wilkins Experimental Photography Prize. He has been a finalist in the Milburn Prize (2023); the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (2023); the Olive Cotton Award (2023) and the Tacit Still Life Prize (2022). He is actively involved in the printmaking community and is a member of the Baldessin Press & Studio Committee of Management, a not-for-profit access, education and editioning studio.