Joseph Graves Jr. is a DARIA-featured multidisciplinary artist, educator, and performer based in Denver, Colorado. Raised around horses and the landscapes of Kansas and Colorado, he draws from personal history, cultural heritage, and contemporary urban life to create bold, layered artworks.

Graves holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado and a degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. His work spans painting, mixed media, photography, and children’s literature, and has been exhibited across Colorado, including at Clayton Members Hotel, Charlie Cousins Gallery, D’Art Gallery, Niza Knoll, MAE’s Gallery, Vida Ellison, and See Saw Art Gallery. He is also an educator in digital arts and design, guiding students to explore creativity and identity through visual storytelling.

Graves’s paintings are visual conversations between color, culture, and consciousness—an exploration of emotion, rhythm, and memory. He creates from a space where history and energy collide, using color as language and texture as testimony. His process is improvisational and physical, guided by sound, movement, and intuition merging chaos with harmony. Influenced by artists including Kandinsky, Basquiat, Rothko, and van Gogh, Graves merges modern abstraction with storytelling traditions.

At the center of his practice is a dialogue between Afrofuturism and history, including a focus on Black cowboys whose stories have often been hidden or rewritten. Through vibrant palettes and layered textures, he invites viewers not only to look, but to feel—to sense the rhythm of a people and a spirit that refuses to fade.