Viewfinder – Sam O’Donnell

In Viewfinder, Samuel O’Donnell presents a selection of recent works that explore the possibilities found within painting’s ability to frame the world.

O’Donnell’s paintings attempt to understand something of the immediate, contemporary environment – in particular the aberrations and oddities found in the home, the city and the landscape, views glanced at while travelling or compositions found in domestic life. Subjects for his paintings have been disparate as well as ubiquitous; a football stand, a bathroom sink, a streetlight, reflections in car bodywork, his children at home, an eraser on the studio table. They are subjects chosen for being both strange and familiar, aspects of the everyday that the artist is in equal parts devoted to and puzzled by.

A consistent motif in his work is that of the natural framing device of windows. The way windows create a view in and a view out, incorporating reflected light, interiority, doubling and a means to automatically crop the world. What we choose to include and what we leave out. For O’Donnell, framing the works in such a way becomes a game of endless visual variation, a way to consider line, colour, composition, materiality, gesture, edges and abstraction.

The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Jamie Limond.

Samuel O’Donnell (b. 1992, Bolton) is an artist based in Glasgow. He is founder/director of A_Place Gallery, Glasgow and together with Jamie Limond, runs the YouTube channel Painting Nerds. Exhibitions include Drive, Papple Steading, Haddington (upcoming). Open Return, A_Place Gallery, Glasgow 2024. Good Morning Have You Had Breakfast Yet?, Hweg, Penzance, 2024. The Very Hours Pass Unnoticed, Warbling Collective, Greatorex Street, London, 2023. Opening, A_Place Gallery, Glasgow, 2023. Homage to those green things where I found you, IOTA, Glasgow 2023. He was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize, 2022 and completed a Royal Drawing School Dumfries House Artist Residency in 2021. He has received grants from Mondriaan Fonds (with Painting Nerds), Sputnik Arts and Hope Scott Trust.