Lucy Ann O'Donnell
Lucy Ann O’Donnell is an English–Irish visual artist based in central England, working across oil painting, drawing, film, sound, and moving image. She has been shortlisted twice for The British Art Prize (2024 and 2025), leading to her work being exhibited at OXO Gallery in London on both occasions.
Throughout her career, Lucy has balanced creative practice with public engagement. Her oil paintings have been exhibited in respected venues, recognised by national awards, and commissioned by clients including high-profile public figures. She has also built an online community of more than 10,000 followers, sharing her work with audiences around the world.
Her practice centres on hyperrealism, the phenomenology of light, and the use of art as a tool for emotional regulation and wellbeing. She is interested in how art can cultivate joy within the mundane, offering quiet moments of gratitude and appreciation for the often overlooked details of everyday life. Through precise, light-focused realism, she creates visual illusions that invite viewers to reconsider their perception of the familiar and to reflect on the ways attention, memory, and perception continuously shape their experience of reality.
A longstanding fascination with chiaroscuro drew her into the artistic and philosophical dimensions of perception. This interest has evolved into a broader exploration of natural and artificial light and their differing emotional effects on the viewer. Recently, she has expanded this inquiry through the integration of immersive soundscapes with hyperrealistic still life paintings, creating atmospheric, multisensory experiences that encourage deeper embodied engagement.
As part of her master’s degree in Fine Art, Lucy has developed advanced creative, analytical, and research skills, extending her practice into filmmaking and interdisciplinary collaboration. She was awarded a Distinction for a project examining sustainability through an experimental film and short documentary. Another major project involved working with her local community to collect personal objects that inspired paintings, soundscapes, and photography. She collaborated with a photographer and musician, hosted a public immersive event, gathered visitor feedback, and produced a documentary film capturing the project’s development. Her current master’s research examines how audiences engage with hyperrealism within contemporary digital culture.
Her community and charity involvement spans many years. She has collaborated extensively with Cherished, a West Midlands charity supporting girls and young women, co-delivering wellbeing workshops, creating artworks for public events, and designing promotional materials for International Women’s Day. In 2024, she designed and painted a large public sculpture for the Wild in Art Trail in Birmingham, working closely with local children to incorporate their artwork into the final piece — reflecting her commitment to inclusivity, creativity, and community connection.
Her wider achievements include having work displayed at Cass Art in Birmingham, donating art proceeds to the NHS during the pandemic, and creating a commissioned portrait now on permanent public display in a local hospital.
Across all areas of her practice, calm and care remain central. Using art as a means of self-regulation has profoundly shaped Lucy’s wellbeing, and she aims to extend that experience outward — creating work that offers viewers moments of stillness, heightened perception, and subtle emotional resonance.