Cassandra Donnelly

Cassandra Donnelly is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, printmaking, and installation. She received her BFA from University of Massachusetts Lowell. Through drawing on personal and familial memory, her work engages matters of cultural identity, religion, and individual history, critically examining questions of belonging, belief, and inheritance.

Donnelly’s work serves as a surrogate for the collective experience, lending personal imagery to broader cultural discourse. As a daughter of the Irish and Puerto Rican diaspora, Donnelly’s experience with assimilation, cultural erasure, and lineage drives and informs her practice.

Primarily working as an oil painter, Cassandra Donnelly uses techniques of layering and fragmentation to represent the conflict and dissonance of holding two distinct cultural backgrounds within America. Recurring floral motifs connect overlapping themes of temporality, femininity, and conservatorship. Furthermore, Donnelly has developed a consistent visual language of cultural, feminine, and religious iconography.