About Me
Hello I’m calista
About Me
Painting the world how I think it should be seen – with lots of colour! I am a passionate, self-taught, visual artist from Adelaide, South Australia. Conveying the pattern and form of everyday subjects through colour and ink is at the core of my work. With paint and a brush, I create playful paintings that make people smile. I seek to capture objects or places that they might not otherwise consider twice. I paint, with the hopes that viewers might pause and consider that intrigue can be found in even the most mundane- all we have to do is stop and look for it.
Born in Adelaide, South Australia, I have been dedicated to creative expression my whole life. While art at secondary school became more structured, I focused on other academic successes but never abandoned my passion for creating. Whether it was with a paintbrush, a pencil or a pen I have always been drawn to making marks on paper.
I pursued my tertiary education in a Bachelor of Business, Design and Marketing, a degree that allowed me to develop practical marketing expertise whilst maintaining a creative outlet. This foundation equipped me with proficiency in industry-standard design software such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.
Despite maintaining painting as a personal pursuit, I soon recognized the challenges of being a jack of all trades but a master of none. Determined to refine my craft, I committed to mastering the techniques of watercolour, with a focus on landscapes. I curated a collection of photographs from my travels—often inspired by beach sunsets and rolling green hills—and devised a structured approach to my practice, numbering each piece to stay accountable and avoid procrastination. Dedicated to skill-building, I set an audacious goal to complete one painting per week for an entire year. This turned out to be an ambitious goal. But after two and a half years I had built up a repertoire of A5 watercolour landscapes.
Initially, I found the linework phase tedious, yet over time, became captivated by the precision of fine details. This fascination eventually led me to experiment with leaving some pieces devoid of colour, emphasizing the expressive power of my intricate lines and detailed patterns.
More recently, I have expanded my artistic practice to still life studies in gouache, further exploring colour relationships and compositional depth in my work. This study is designed to focus on a variety of fruits and vegetables. A project that has grown to also include watercolour and acrylic pieces.
