Meet Artist Malaika Ross

Novel Botanical: 5 (2024), 10″H x 7.5″W, ink, watercolor, and gouache on paper.

Summer to Fall: Hickory Nut (2022), 11″H x 8.5″W, ink, watercolor, and gouache on paper.

Scopulariopsis Asperula Conidiophores and Conidia (2021), 5″H x 4″W, mixed media on paper.

Artist Malaika Ross.

The Messenger (2022), 11″H x 8″W, ink, watercolor, and gouache on paper.

Malaika Ross had tried out enough different majors and schools that when she finally graduated from Hampshire College in her mid-forties, she felt certain she had found her direction: soil science. Then the Covid pandemic hit, and she was stuck at home, repeatedly flipping through books containing
microscopic photographs of soil microbes, which fascinated her. Not only did she admire their role in creating food, but she found the shapes “so ancient, enticing, and beautiful.”

Those microbes reminded Ross of the roots of plants—and of her own roots. She had spent her childhood on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, where her grandmother was a farmer who grew the food for their meals. “We had a daily interaction with the plants outside,” she says, “and a relationship with the soil.”

Ross had taken various art classes and always enjoyed drawing, so to settle her mind and cope with the chaos of the pandemic, she began to draw those soil microbes. Then make collages from the drawings. Then create imaginary microbial worlds. Then she added color. She posted images of the results on Instagram, where people loved them—and bought them. That led to painting things aboveground: leaves, flowers, bouquets of sumac and dogwood in various stages of life and death.

Ross developed a remarkable, graphic method, starting with pencil or ink, then filling in with Japanese watercolor and gouache on dry paper. She has produced figural paintings about the Black experience and survivors of breast cancer, and she has earned multiple grants and gallery shows. In short order, pardon the pun, her life as an artist has blossomed.

“Making art has reconnected me to the way that I grew up,” she says. “I have a great appreciation for the beauty in all things, from the tiny microbes to the gorgeous flowers. Now that I’ve done it every day since 2021, there’s no way I could live without it. It’s my way of making sense of the world.”

Editor’s note: Malaika Ross is represented by Hope and Feathers, Northampton, Mass., hopeandfeathersframing.com. To see more of her work, visit malaikaross.com.