SHANE O’DONNELL: NEON + RUST

CURATOR STATEMENT

A South Bay photographer turned painter, Shane O’Donnell brings his passion for Americana to Neon + Rust, a showcase of his recent canvases exploring vintage neon signs and their aging patina. What began as a personal challenge to elevate with paint what he captured with his camera, O’Donnell has committed to documenting these cultural relics of a bygone era. The result is a body of work that portrays their decaying beauty with remarkable precision and a fresh perspective that merits a closer look.

His process involves taking multiple photographs of the subject, designing the composition on his computer, and then transferring the outline onto a canvas before applying paint. Although they appear photorealistic, there is always an element of artistic license in the execution. As a result, the finished canvas never exactly matches his original photograph.

With a background in photojournalism and editorial photography, the artist brings a mastery of storytelling, along with a keen eye for composition, to his paintings. Images extend beyond the edges of the canvas, the vantage point looking up from below, making the larger-than-life signs the heroes in their own story.

The exhibition includes a series of Cowboy and Indian images presented as iconic signifiers o the West. These neon signs and studies of vintage motor oil cans are portrayed with the same reverence for the past and attention to detail that we have come to expect from this uniquely talented, self-taught painter.

Shane O’Donnell is a professional advertising and editorial photographer based in Los Angeles. He was born in Wisconsin and studied photojournalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia. This is his first solo painting exhibition.