Fred Calleri
Fred is our featured artist for August and will be painting live in the gallery during the ArtWalk on Friday, August 2nd from 6:00-8:30pm!
Please visit our Online Store to view and purchase Fred Calleri's paintings currently available from Arizona Handmade Gallery or come to downtown Flagstaff to see them in person!
Fred is also happy to do custom work. If you'd like him to paint a special piece for you, please contact the gallery.
Fred is also happy to do custom work. If you'd like him to paint a special piece for you, please contact the gallery.
Fred Calleri was born in Maryland in 1964 and graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in the early 1990s. In 2001, at the age of 37, he moved to Flagstaff, Arizona with the goal of starting a career as a painter. He describes this move as basically being re-born. He took up residence in a cabin on the Stilley Ranch, located on a hundred acre property across the street from the Museum of Northern Arizona.
Working at the Arizona Daily Sun for 8 years, Calleri did graphic design and illustration for Flagstaff Live Magazine, Northern Arizona’s Mountain Living Magazine, and the Daily Sun Newspaper. Every free moment was used for painting, getting to know the Flagstaff scene, and camping and hiking the incredible outdoors of the southwest: from Utah to Sedona to Phantom Ranch in Grand Canyon. His familiarity with, and love for, Northern Arizona's unique landscape and history is immediately recognizable in paintings like Four Seasons, Butterfly Whorls, Percival Lowell, and The Harvey Girls.
Calleri has been interested in art throughout his life, and since childhood he has been a gifted draftsman - which has transferred into his talent as an oil painter. Every painting is a lesson learned, as he sets an intention related to mood, palette, light, or expression for each piece. Sometimes the paintings have a whimsical nature, and other times a more representational feel, but the goal of the artist is to learn from each brush stroke. More recently, Calleri has begun to to incorporate moments of abstraction in his work, paying closer attention to the surface, pattern, and line.
"Throughout the years my paintings have gone back and forth stylistically. At times they’ve had a very tight, layered paint surface, and at other times they’ve possessed a loose abstract look and feel. Finding some middle ground where traditional representation can be fused with a more abstract approach is something I strive to achieve in my present work.”
Calleri’s art has been featured in magazines and publications throughout the Southwest, including International Artist, American Art Collector, Western Art Collector, Santa Fe Magazine, Northern Arizona’s Mountain Living Magazine and in Southwest Art Magazine as an artist with which to “Start your Collection.”
Working at the Arizona Daily Sun for 8 years, Calleri did graphic design and illustration for Flagstaff Live Magazine, Northern Arizona’s Mountain Living Magazine, and the Daily Sun Newspaper. Every free moment was used for painting, getting to know the Flagstaff scene, and camping and hiking the incredible outdoors of the southwest: from Utah to Sedona to Phantom Ranch in Grand Canyon. His familiarity with, and love for, Northern Arizona's unique landscape and history is immediately recognizable in paintings like Four Seasons, Butterfly Whorls, Percival Lowell, and The Harvey Girls.
Calleri has been interested in art throughout his life, and since childhood he has been a gifted draftsman - which has transferred into his talent as an oil painter. Every painting is a lesson learned, as he sets an intention related to mood, palette, light, or expression for each piece. Sometimes the paintings have a whimsical nature, and other times a more representational feel, but the goal of the artist is to learn from each brush stroke. More recently, Calleri has begun to to incorporate moments of abstraction in his work, paying closer attention to the surface, pattern, and line.
"Throughout the years my paintings have gone back and forth stylistically. At times they’ve had a very tight, layered paint surface, and at other times they’ve possessed a loose abstract look and feel. Finding some middle ground where traditional representation can be fused with a more abstract approach is something I strive to achieve in my present work.”
Calleri’s art has been featured in magazines and publications throughout the Southwest, including International Artist, American Art Collector, Western Art Collector, Santa Fe Magazine, Northern Arizona’s Mountain Living Magazine and in Southwest Art Magazine as an artist with which to “Start your Collection.”
Above: Painting of Mary Colter by Fred Calleri.
A print of this painting is on permanent display in the El Tovar Lodge at the South Rim of Grand Canyon. Right: Painting of Mary Russell Ferrel Colton by Fred Calleri, painted for the Museum of Northern AZ. |
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