Jose Andres Mato Alonso (JAMA) cruises around Southwest Florida in a red minivan, cigar in hand, smoke wisping out of the window. The Naples-based artist fills the trunk with abandoned hurricane shutters, cardboard and large canvases. It won’t be long before his burly hands paint them with the bare shapes and snaking lines that make up his abstracted figures.
Sometimes, he’ll mix in charcoal, letting its powder smear across the surface. Other times, he applies acrylic paint so heavily that it envelops the figures in thick ridges. Paint rollers, brushes and bare hands are just a few tools in his arsenal, but the method shifts from one work to the next, a process driven by feeling, momentum and flow. “I don’t force anything,” he says. “I am not the boss or the chief of the painting. The painting orders me, tells me what to do.”
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Photography by Dan Cutrona
naples abstract artist jama
The Naples-based artist is known for his dense, abstracted forms and riotous fields of color. His work can be seen by appointment at his storage unit.
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JAMA’s The Sheriff (2022)
naples artist jama the sheriff
JAMA’s creative journey began in his native Cuba, where he entertained his father’s friends by sketching portraits. But, with the strain of food rations and limited access to materials, he put art on the back burner for most of his young life. Then, while studying geography at the University of Havana, JAMA had his first child. “[When] my daughter was born, I looked in the mirror and said, ‘Well, I don’t like what I see. I don’t want the person I am to be a father,’” he says. “It started an introspection.” He saw himself clearly for the first time—a boy still learning to be a man. A psychologist friend gave him Plato: Complete Works, which led to Aristotle’s The Organon and other texts. “There aren’t many books in Cuba,” he says, lamenting the government’s heavy repression of literature. “But Aristotle was not a problem for them.”
He first pursued the philosophers’ works in an effort to learn about fatherhood, but their words soon led to the discovery of his identity as an artist. Aristotle’s meditations on geometry were the starting point. “With Aristotle, everything starts in the center of the circle—it is both symbolism and logic,” JAMA says, noting how the geometric forms found in nature influence the way we feel about certain shapes. “If you make an oval, you consider the elliptical movement of the universe. If you make the square, you consider stone. So geometry is everywhere.” This exploration led him to canvas—or whatever substitute he could find—and the creation of a style that persists today.
JAMA’s Pink Pelican and Blue Child (2025)
naples artist jama pink pelican and blue child
While JAMA resists a particular stylistic label, his work is often described as post-neo-expressionism, with frequent comparisons to Keith Haring’s rhythmic lines, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s rough-around-the-edges marks, and surrealists’ cerebral subject matter. (In 2006, JAMA’s pieces hung next to Salvador Dalí’s in a Miami exhibition, contrasting JAMA’s aggressively tackled canvases with Dalí’s dreamlike imagery).
The artist begins by painting or drawing circles, squares, ovals and rectangles at random, then fills and connects the shapes with lines to create a larger form. The bodies that emerge are jagged and asymmetrical, organic and primitive. From there, details help to forge the figures’ identities, ranging from the beaked headpiece adorning a tooth-baring profile in Japanese Crane (2024) to the towering Minotaur (2024), where the mythical monster’s single eye creates a focal point in the canvas—a ghoulish interpretation of the center of Aristotle’s circle, awash in gold and blue.
Photography by Dan Cutrona
naples abstract artist jama
Aristotle’s ruminations on geometry often serve as the genesis for his work. JAMA will start with bare shapes and then connect them with snaking lines and smudges. “I am not the boss or the chief of the painting,” he says. “The painting orders me, tells me what to do.” Pictured here: JAMA’s Easter Girl (2025) and Edgar Allan Poe (2024)
His time as a working artist in Cuba was rich, but brief. Limited opportunities led him to look beyond the island nation’s borders. Around 2002, JAMA traveled to Costa Rica for two months, securing a visa, and made his way to Miami, Florida.
Typically, when JAMA speaks, he either flings around his cigar absentmindedly or he gestures wildly, jabbing the smoldering tobacco. But when he speaks of his daughter, he draws his arms in closer. “I left my daughter in Cuba,” he continues. “It was the biggest pain I have ever felt in my life.”
JAMA’s Childs (Sun and Moon) (2025)
naples abstract artist jama childs sun and moon
JAMA threw himself into his new life, laboring at a sugar cane factory near West Palm Beach to save money while he kept making artwork. Soon, his muscular art style attracted representation from a Miami art dealer, and his career picked up momentum. Long hours in the factory were replaced by exhibits with major artists and conversations with wealthy buyers attracted to his riotous fields of color and form. “In Miami, there were always people at my door,” he says. In 2006, after four years, JAMA was able to bring his daughter stateside. He wanted to be with her, but the city’s rat race stood in the way.
JAMA’s The Girl with the Face of Many Colors (2024-2025)
naples abstract artist jama the girl with the face of many colors
Now, with his own child grown, JAMA wants to use his talents to help underserved children in the community. A nonprofit is in the works to provide kids with art supplies and instruction.
His 2010 move to Naples marked a shift, a step back from the limelight. “[I wanted] to try to recover the time that I lost,” he says. While JAMA continues to work prolifically, he no longer sprints after dealers or jets off to events in Monaco. In place of a public-facing studio, he sprawls decades of work across the red-paneled halls of his Naples storage facility, inviting collectors and friends to peruse the stacks.
Since his daughter graduated from law school, JAMA has begun to pour his energy into efforts to improve the lives of children everywhere. A nonprofit is in the works, with the goal of supplying underserved children with art supplies. The effort is inspired, in part, by his experience volunteering as an art teacher with Naples’ nonprofit Grace Place for Children and Families years ago. For him, it’s a full-circle moment, a way to honor and perpetuate the opportunities that helped his family find their own success stories.