Hi, I'm Callie. 👋
I’m a watercolor artist working out of a small studio in Greensboro, Vermont.
I’ve been painting for as long as I can remember. Most of that time I was a teacher, which turned out to be the best preparation I could’ve asked for — kids notice everything, take nothing too seriously, and are completely unbothered by an animal having a personality. I learned a lot from them.
Eventually I started painting watercolor animals on the side, mostly because I wanted to see what would happen. The first few had names by the time they were finished. The next few had backstories. At some point I realized I wasn’t just painting animals anymore — I was painting a small cast of characters, and they kept showing up.
So here we are.
How I work
Every Calerific piece starts the same way: a sheet of paper, a few brushes, a cup of tea, and an animal who feels like showing up that day. I don’t really plan them in advance. The personality usually arrives somewhere around the second wash of color, and then I’m just trying to keep up.
I name them when they’re done. Some get easy names (Maple Moose). Some get punny names (In Bread Emu). Some name themselves before I’ve even finished the painting, which I’ve stopped questioning.
When a piece feels right, it goes into the shop — as a print, a notecard, sometimes a framed original. The rest end up in a sketchbook somewhere, possibly plotting their next move.
A little about my studio
My studio is in Greensboro, Vermont, which is a small town in the Northeast Kingdom with more cows than people and exactly the kind of quiet I needed to do this work. Most mornings it’s tea, natural light, and one extremely opinionated dog who has decided where I should sit.
In the summer I pack up the prints and head to local markets around Vermont — Greensboro, Stowe, wherever they’ll have me. If you’ve stopped by a booth, hi. If you haven’t yet, the schedule’s on the homepage.
One last thing
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Painting these little characters has turned into one of the most unexpectedly meaningful things I’ve ever done, and a lot of that is because of the people who keep showing up — buying a print, sending a photo of where it ended up, telling me what critter I should paint next.
If you’re new here: come meet the friends. They’re over in the shop, most of them, anyway. A few are still escaping the studio as we speak.
— Callie