Hi, I'm Callie. 👋
I’m a watercolor artist working out of a small backyard studio in Greensboro, Vermont.
I’ve been painting for as long as I can remember. Until very recently, for most of my adult life, I was also a teacher. Turns out, spending your days with kids is the single best thing you can do for your sense of wonder. But, those big canvases I used to lose myself in… not exactly compatible with a full-time job and a finite amount of square footage. So I picked up watercolor, a medium that had always made me a little nervous, honestly, and I started painting animals. Small ones. Silly ones.
The first few had names before the paint was dry. The expressions that emerged brought in attitudes and backstories. Somewhere along the way I realized I wasn’t painting animals, I was creating characters. Now I have a whole cast of them, with their own quirks and inside jokes that I’m still figuring out.
I don’t know entirely where they came from. But they keep showing up, and I’ve learned not to ask too many questions.
So here we are.
How I work
Every Calerific piece starts the same way: a sheet of paper, a few brushes, and an animal that showed up uninvited while I was driving or in the shower. (They have absolutely no respect for personal space. I’ve made peace with this.) The personality usually arrives somewhere around the second layer of color, after that I’m mostly just trying to keep up.
Naming happens at the end. Some get straightforward names (Maple Moose). Some get punny names (In Bread Emu — I regret nothing). Some have apparently decided their own name before I’ve even put down my brush, and honestly, who am I to argue?
Finished pieces go into the shop as prints, notecards, and occasionally framed originals. The ones that don’t make it that far end up tucked into a sketchbook somewhere, possibly plotting their next move. They have a way of showing up again when they feel like it. I’ve stopped trying to predict when that will be.
A little about my studio
My studio is in Greensboro, Vermont, which is a small town in the Northeast Kingdom (with possibly more cows than people) and the quiet is exactly the kind I need. Most weekdays I have another job to go to, but whenever I can, I head down to the studio to check in on the animals. They seem unbothered either way, but I like to think they notice.
In the summer, I pack up the prints and take the whole gang to local markets around Vermont. If you’ve ever stopped by a booth, hello! If you haven’t yet, the schedule is on the homepage.
Come find us. The animals travel well.
One last thing
If you’ve made it this far, thank you, genuinely.
Painting these little characters has turned into something I didn’t see coming, and a lot of that is because of the people who stop by a booth, send a message, or tell me exactly which animal I should paint next. (I’m listening. Keep them coming.) This whole thing wouldn’t be what it is without that or without you.
If you’re new here, welcome. The friends are mostly over in the shop, waiting patiently to meet you. A few are still working on escaping the studio, as we speak.
They’ll get here when they’re ready.
– Callie