Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper

Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper paints and exhibits her art in the United States, the Caribbean, India and Egypt that traverse the cultural and geographic boundaries of her origin and ancestry. From Jamaica, where she was born, Lucilda has adopted the bright primary colors that are reflected in the subtropical sun of the Caribbean. Her layered style reflects her own background as an immigrant whose consciousness retains images of her birthplace alongside those of her adopted country.

This fusion of geographic and cultural consciousness in her art is discussed in the essay "Chutney, Metissage and Other Mixed Metaphors" by Gita Rajan in the book Afro-Asian Encounters (New York University Press - 2006)

Some of her ancestors migrated from India to Jamaica in the late 19th century, and she returned to their homeland in the late 1990s to live, travel, photograph and paint for three years. Other ancestors were Afro-Caribbean and she has also painted, and e-journaled her travels with photographs of Egypt during a five month stay on the African continent in 2008.

In India, she painted the Veiled Presence series of 15 portraits of subcontinental women mostly clad in colorful, traditional saris with either their backs turned or faces covered, representing expressions of identity through dress and body language despite the subjects' seeming anonymity. The Associated Press describes work from the Veiled Presence Series as "jewel-toned" when she represented the U.S. at India's 9th Triennale, the international exhibit that previously featured the artists Sam Gilliam and Louise Nevelson. Lucilda's life-like paintings in oils on canvas were displayed in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. The entire series has been exhibited at the US Embassy in India and the Parish Gallery in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC.

Returning to India as an artist-in-residence in 2007, she exhibited her paintings at the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, and led a panel discussion with fellow artists from the Global Arts Village in Gitorni.

For the first five months of 2008, she worked in Egypt. Her paintings on the theme Myth, Magic & Metaphors in oil on canvas depict images of contemporary Cairo with iconic pharonic imagery, transcending time, linking present and past, while creating new insights on the symbolism of the ancient icons as enduring efforts in the human urge to impose order and continuity, limiting chaos.

Other series of works explore the individual consciousness and the body in various manifestations of energetic cycles and psychological states of being, an avenue she explores from the inside out in her practice of hatha yoga and contemplative meditations.

Lucilda has taught art at two community colleges in the Boston area and a public school in the District of Columbia, and directed public art projects in both cities. She was an instructor at Massachusetts Bay Community College in Wellesley and at Roxbury Community College in Boston. At Fillmore Arts Center, the nation's only art school for elementary and middle school students, Lucilda helped to design the visual arts curriculum and taught painting, sculpture, television criticism, advertising, calligraphy and hatha yoga.

While at Fillmore, she directed students in the creation of "Underwater World," a ceramic and glass mural. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the D.C. Commission on the Arts, the mural graces the facade of the Hyde School in Georgetown. Another set of murals, "Faces of D.C.," were created with faculty and students of Fillmore for the General Services Administration.

A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art, Lucilda lives in Boston and paints in her studio in Jamaica that she designed and built. She is also designing the Mary Seacole Healing Garden for the Military Museum of the Jamaica Defense Force in Kingston.