Emma Kalff

Oil Painter, Ridgway, CO

Emma Kalff’s work is a distillation of her everyday life after memory, emotion and dreams have had their way with it.  

Kalff was classically trained in oil painting under American realist painter Auseklis Ozols at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. In 2018-19, Kalff traveled across the United States working on farms, and made a series of paintings inspired by the places she lived and worked. This body of work, called Finding America, was noticed in Telluride, CO, where she later had her first solo show at the Telluride Arts Headquarters Gallery in 2020. 

Additional recognition followed, and the artist’s work was recently featured in Southwest Art magazine’s “21 Under 31: Young Artists to Collect Now”, as well as in American Art Collector magazine, Aesthetica magazine, and Studio Visit magazine. In 2023 she was listed as an “Artist to Watch” by Plein Air Magazine. Kalff’s paintings are in private and public collections, and have been shown at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art. She is based in Colorado, and is represented by Abend Gallery in Denver, CO.