Ross Caliendo (b. 1988, Pittsburgh, PA) is a visual artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. With his vividly textured paintings, Caliendo presents a surreal interpretation of ecology and investigates the powerful tension created by color in combination with thick impasto.

His images extend from sky to sea, yet frequently tend toward a middle ground of vegetated landscape. Over the last decade, Caliendo’s practice has undergone a transition from abstraction to naturalistic figuration, though certain conceits from the former have endured. Resulting works riff on the tranquility of traditional landscape painting while offering a distinct energetic charge.