Jo Mata's Sensory Worlds

By Brian D’Ambrosio

Jo Mata’s art is a space where human experience unfolds with quiet intensity, where figures seem to breathe, reflect, and confront the viewer in equal measure.

“I want my work to be breathable and organic,” she said. “I want to leave my own conscience in my art. I do not believe in political or social propaganda or preaching. I leave some interpretation. I want people to have a conversation with the art. Art has that power to evoke, to move, and start a dialogue.”

Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Mata discovered her artistic calling early, pursuing an arts-oriented education enriched by art history. Her beginnings were humble but immersive: “I started with landscape and shifted to saying something more with the human figure and body,” she explained.

Inspired by Caribbean artists, as well as Cuban, Vietnamese, and Dominican painters who lived the bohemian life—“the ones who were cooking and sleeping in the studio”—she developed a practice rooted in observation, intuition, and color.

Mata’s work centers on the female form and the broader human experience. Her figures are luminous, their skin a mosaic of light and shadow, their gestures poised and deliberate.

“I love to depict a variety of faces: beautiful, old, young, black and white,” Mata said. “There is beauty in the wrinkles. Wrinkles are the footprints of experience. The features are easy. The positioning and location of the features is easy. The hard part is, how do you get to the essence and spirit of the soul? How do you put certain life and essence into the figures?”

This philosophy animates her paintings, which shimmer with vitality, nuance, and the tactile energy of layered materials.

Mata’s creative process is closely tied to the sensory exploration of color and texture. Working in oil, graphite, transfer, collage, engraving, and more recently, yarn, she constructs compositions that invite the eye to wander, to rest, and to marvel.

“Weaving is a profound metaphor for our interconnectedness as humans,” she said. “It fits perfectly with what I want to convey.”

Whether applied in threads of yarn or in rich brushstrokes, her materials celebrate the interplay of light, shadow, and hue.

Her nude figures, depicted with both intimacy and intensity, exist in a world of color and form that is as expressive as it is contemplative. Some figures are absorbed in thought. Others seem to dance in motion. Some gaze directly at the viewer, unflinching and alive.

Mata incorporates elements from myth and legend, creating visual stories where the fantastical and the tangible intersect. Each work offers subtle surprises—a carefully placed hue, a glimmer of metallic pigment, or the unexpected texture of woven yarn.

Before relocating to New Mexico in 2012, Mata, 60, worked in theater and performance in the Dominican Republic. These experiences inform the physicality and energy of her figures, giving them a dynamic presence that extends beyond the canvas. In her studio near the Ortiz Mountains, she continues to teach workshops for all ages, passing on both technique and the joy of creative exploration.

“We are better people when we are creating art,” she said.

Mata’s exhibition record spans both her native country and New Mexico. Highlights include the mid-career retrospective Mare Nostrum: A Look into an Artist’s Inner Visions (2024) and Empowered Creations: Celebrating Women Artists (2024) at the Doña Ana Arts Council in Las Cruces. Her work has also appeared in venues across Taos, Santa Fe, and Madrid, New Mexico, as well as at major cultural institutions in the Dominican Republic.

Her collaborations in performance art further highlight her fascination with movement, rhythm, and physical expression — qualities that echo throughout her visual work. In these projects, she explores how gesture and presence can extend painting’s emotional reach into the lived moment.

Ultimately, Mata’s work centers on presence, color, and the poetry of the human form. She draws inspiration from the many facets of human experience — our triumphs, vulnerabilities, and moments of beauty — translating them into paintings, sculptures, and installations.

“It is beautiful to be able to own your own feelings,” she said, reflecting on the self-awareness that art makes possible.

However, “Once it leaves the studio, it belongs to the viewer.”

Brian D'Ambrosio is an art and music journalist and the author of New Mexico Eccentrics.