Hugh O’Donnell is an internationally celebrated artist, exhibiting regularly since 1975 with one-person and group shows presented at many prestigious venues. He has exhibited extensively in New York, throughout the U.S, and worldwide in such public venues as The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, N.Y.; The Metropolitan Museum, N.Y.; The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.; The Royal Academy, London; Tate Britain, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Walker Art Gallery, Minneapolis; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museum of modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; XLII Venice Biennale, Italy; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; IV Art Biennale, Medell?n, Colombia and The National Gallery, Taiwan.

Educated in England and Japan O'Donnell moved with his family to New York in 1987. After a five year stay living and working in Tribeca, N.Y.C., he moved to the lakes and hills of Connecticut in 1992. He calls this move with his immersion in the county side the beginning of his "Green Age". Since that time he sums up his primary practice as being dedicated to "the drama of the struggle for light and space going on inside us and in the world around us" This struggle is expressed through both subjective and objective study of the organic world perceived internally and observed in external natural phenomenon. This practice began with his large constructed paintings of the 1980s which won international acclaim launching an international career while he was still in his twenties. These works set the foundations for his later exploration of a primary physical sensation of natural forces seen and felt in the growing world around us. His primary practice is centered in painting methodologies but whenever new tools are needed to see further into the visible world he has adapted new technologies to advance this need. A grasp of new technology is second nature to O'Donnell and is displayed in his commissioned mural sized digital print and installation multimedia artworks that began in 1994.

His adaptability is the cornerstone of his pedagogical work as Professor of Painting and Site-Specific Public Art at Boston University. He is an artist and teacher able to cross the borders that traditionally separate specializations such as the humanities from the general sciences. He has worked with major institutions representing: life sciences, telecommunications, military research, medical, ecclesiastic, financial, hospitality, photonics, photography and dance.

In 2011 he founded Body Echo L.L.C., a production company that allows for a broad spectrum of artistic collaborations that utilize diverse technical and artistic expertise to cross the borders that traditionally separate specialized domains of knowledge to create artworks that are often a fusion of poetic and scientific research. This company is now the arena that is home to all of his Site Specific projects.

O’Donnell’s artwork is held in many Museum collections including The Addison Gallery of American Art Andover, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.; Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.; Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, N.Y.; Rose Art Museum Boston, M.A.: Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Denver Museum of Art; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Yokohama Museum of Art Japan; Polk Museum of Art, Florida; Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo; The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Arts, C.T.; London Contemporary Arts Society; Tate Britain, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Arts Council of Great Britain; British Council, U.K.