"I am open to looking at and analyzing any kind of investment for my clients," he says, "but ultimately, it has to make sense, and most importantly it has to be the right thing for the client."
The office space his practice occupies feeds his artistic sensibilities. O'Donnell & Associates takes up the second floor of a 122-year-old restored railroad station known as the Erie Depot. His ancestors, as it happens, worked for the Erie Lackawanna Railroad when they first immigrated to the United States from County Donegal (the land of O'Donnell) in Ireland. "We have 14-foot-high ceilings and colored glass transoms above the doors. Everybody who comes in here loves the space," he says.
The high ceilings are part of what inspired O'Donnell to host an art exhibit at his office, since he had a lot of empty wall space, "not to mention my wife wanted me to get the paintings out of the house," he says.
It was five or six years ago that O'Donnell conceived the idea of incorporating movements from his martial arts background into abstract, minimalist and expressionist style art. As a policeman, he had combined his martial arts, military hand-to-hand combat training and police defensive tactics into something he calls the O'Domhnaill Ryu Aiki Bujutsu method. (O'Domhnaill is Gaelic for O'Donnell.) Over the years, he has owned and operated five martial arts studios and he still teaches select adult students.
With everything else he's involved with, he was too busy to try out his painting ideas until six months ago, when he started working in acrylic.
Since then, he has been regarded in local markets for his use of color and form. He has shown his work in three different exhibits, including one at his office alongside two other local artists. His work is also on display at local galleries and high-end restaurants, and one piece was recently accepted into a regional juried exhibition at the Artery Gallery in Milford, Pa.
"I don't want to denigrate any other form of art, but I think abstract painting is one of the highest forms of art because you are not replicating something that already exists," he says. "Instead, you are creating something in your mind from your thoughts and emotions that did not exist before and putting it on canvas. Ten different people will see 10 different things in one of my paintings, and none of them may be what I saw."
Painting is both an outlet and a stress reliever, he says, which is important since his two sons, Stephen Jr. and Ryan, have both been in war zones in the last six years. He also has a teenage daughter, Stephanie, whom he will soon be teaching to drive.
In his short career, he has finished more than 30 paintings. His work is influenced by the time he spent living in Japan and by his Irish heritage, as well as by his interest in nature and science, he says.
His work can be completely abstract. One painting, a piece that encompasses only spots of color, is even called Purely Abstract. But other works have an Irish history influence, such as his green, white and orange panels with splotches of red titled 800 Years, an appreciation of O'Donnell's ancestors, who were deeply involved in the 800-year-long Irish struggle for independence.