Jo Archuleta (b. 2000, Taos, NM) is a contemporary figurative painter based in Kansas City, MO. Her work examines identity and the mythology of womanhood through themes of leisure, desire, and performance, navigating the expectations of femininity and gender roles to reveal transgressive and transformative definitions of self.

Humor, satire, and the recurring “crusty dog” motif operate as disarming tools that serve as both self-identifying symbols and metaphors for the awkward and uncomfortable realities of girlhood. Her figures oscillate between seduction and self-consciousness, confronting the contradictions of vanity, beauty, ego, and insecurity.

Driven by materiality, Archuleta uses texture and saturated color to create both attraction and repulsion, while her women wear masks of softness, shallowness, or confidence that simultaneously expose their own vulnerability. The result is a body of work that situates itself between critique and play, myth and satire, self-awareness and self-sabotage.