Originally from Buffalo, New York, Carrie Markello lived and worked in Texas from 1981-2024. Receiving her doctorate in art education in 2006, Markello taught art and museum education courses at the University of Houston until her retirement in 2017. Growing up in upstate New York, Carrie enjoyed the change of seasons, playing in the woods, sledding on gentle hills, and swimming in cold spring-fed lakes during the summer months. Raising her three children in Texas with her geologist husband, Carrie learned to love a different landscape full of expansive flatlands, colorful sunsets, and fields sparsely populated with gnarled oak trees. Relocating to San Diego in 2024, she relishes walks on the beach and the climate that supports beautiful gardens, butterflies, and birds.

Natural forms inspire Carrie’s work. Influenced by her personal experiences and memories, figures, flora and fauna are her preferred subject matter. Carrie uses acrylic and mixed media on canvas and wood, and occasionally creates 3-dimensional objects.

Her mixed media artwork has been included in regional, national, and international group exhibitions in Dallas and Houston, Texas, the University of Massachusetts, Seattle, and in San Diego at Ashton Gallery, Woodward Contemporary, and the San Diego Watercolor Society. Art critic Jerry Saltz selected her mixed-media painting, for a two-year traveling exhibition, New American Talent that opened at the Arthouse in Austin, Texas in 2004.

Carrie has also shown her mixed media paintings in solo exhibitions at Studio 6 Gallery, Coppell, Texas, Mountain View College, Dallas, and at Houston Community College’s Northline Gallery and in two two-person exhibitions in Houston, Texas with Jay Hill and with Linda Hayward. In a collaborative project, Carrie and Linda created Zone V, a line of dryer lint clothing exhibited in Fotofest 2002 and at Poissant Gallery’s Fashionista exhibition in Houston. Zone V pieces not included in private collections became a part of the Houston Community College’s Fashion Archive. Her artwork is in private collections in Dallas, Houston, Florida, Oregon, and San Diego. She works and shows her work in studio 12 at Art on 30^th in San Diego.