He has participated in group shows in Los Angeles and New York. During the mid-1970's, he had one-man shows at Marymount Manhattan College, where he taught for eight years, and at the Levitan Gallery in downtown Manhattan. In 1986 and 1990, his work was exhibited in one-man shows in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and in 1991 and 1995 at the Levitan Gallery. His work is represented in collections in Los Angeles, New York, Belgrade, and Paris.
An international exhibitor for tne years, Odell is a figure painter with a lively neo-surrealist imagination. His painting style is closer in spirit to the naked pictorialism of Réné Magritte than the fussy metaphysics of Salvador Dalí, and he puts it to startling use in his oddly affecting paintings. In "Juggler's Vein", for one example, a forlorn figure in a kind of harlequin costume sits on gray stone steps. All around him, floating in the air and gathered at his feet, are a multitude of red balls.
In another painting, "Fickle Superstring Theory", a nude female figure is set against a brilliant red background and surrounded by a geometric maze of black string.
Other paintings, such as "Chaired Presence" and "Post-Nativity", play with equally intriguing fancies. In the former, a man sits at a writing table, seemingly mesmerized by a nearby chair, shaped like a voluptuous female torso and painted in realistic flesh tones. In the latter, a naked baby, wearing the mask of an adult man, is propped on a purple pillow in a desolate landscape setting.
The paintings of Luzerne Odell resonate in memory long after one has viewed them. Dreamlike and often quite disturbing, they are products of a powerful, highly original imagination. His work ushers one into an engrossing private world where it is possible to encounter one's very own demons in disguise.
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