Malaika Ross (she/her) is a Caribbean American visual artist who creates two-dimensional art about soil and the botanical world. She is a graduate of Hampshire College and earned her B.A. with a focus in soil microbiology. Her Div III thesis was titled “The Impact of Solar Arrays on Soil Microbial Activity”. In 2019, inspired by the shapes of soil microbes, she shifted her focus from soil research to drawing soil microorganisms and later adopted an expressive approach to botanical painting of introduced and native flora in Western Massachusetts.