Marcella Kriebel — grew up in Forest Grove, and graduated from Forest Grove High School and Willamette University with a degree in studio art and cultural anthropology, and a minor in Spanish. A year after graduating, she got the opportunity to intern at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in the exhibits department and moved to Washington, D.C., in 2009. The position led to a job in a museum exhibition installation, producing displays and traveling around the U.S. setting up museum displays. Marcella has travelled quite a bit over the last decade and learned that the best way to get to know a culture is through its cuisine and how the locals express themselves with their favorite dishes. She has visited numerous Latin American countries, cooking and learning recipes along the way, and documenting everything in her sketchbook journals. As a result, she’s published two cookbooks featuring recipes collected on her travels and illustrated in watercolor. Her first book, Mi Comida Latina, was the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign. Two years later, her publisher sent Marcella to Cuba to write and illustrate a cookbook in a similar style.

It is titled Comida Cubana, and she has visited there four times — “really appreciating the generosity of the people.” These successes gave her the confidence to pursue her art full time, and she sells her food-related watercolor prints from her art studio in Washington, D.C., that she opened in 2016.
Marcella divides her time between commissions, mural painting, art shows and teaching. She’s been offering online watercolor painting classes since Covid-19 arrived and continues to add to her Illustrated Feast collection, as well as working on commissions and commercial client work. She splits her time between her D.C. studio and Oregon now, soaking up the best of both worlds.

This past year she’s made some large-scale paintings that are quite different than her ongoing watercolors and cookbooks. The ones to be shown at Valley Art are home-based narratives that weave together interior comforts, textiles, and looking to the outdoors. Check her website, if you’d like to see more.

seashell cat $795.00