Born and raised in Springfield, Oregon,

Kayla Carlile is an oil painter and social media content creator. Her earliest memories of art trace back to afternoons spent drawing with her grandmother at the kitchen table. After giving birth to her son Landon at only sixteen, she went on to graduate with honors and receive a generous scholarship from the Ford Family Foundation to the University of Oregon, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Art in Spanish in 2019. Kayla was recognized as a featured reception speaker for the University of Oregon’s Ford Scholars program, where she shared her story of resilience with fellow scholarship recipients. She started sharing her artwork online while setting up a weekly booth at the Eugene Saturday Market, eventually converting an old warehouse into a Paint & Sip studio where she taught weekly art classes. As her audience grew to more than 1,000,000 followers across social platforms, her art career eclipsed her 9–5 job, allowing her to pursue art full time.

Her work extends beyond the canvas into large-scale murals completed across the United States and Mexico, including commissioned installations for restaurants owned by former Oregon Ducks running back LaMichael James. She is also a published children’s book author, bringing her imagination to life through titles such as When Hippos Fly. Kayla’s work and story have been featured in interviews with national news outlets, including TODAY.com and FoxBusiness.com. Kayla attributes her artistic success to her son Landon and her high school art teacher, Mr. Dickey- whose classroom gave her a safe space and who encouraged her to chase her dream of being an artist.

Today, a happily married mother of two sons, Kayla paints from her home studio and releases originals and limited editions privately through her online portfolio. Her work is collected worldwide. In 2026, she felt called to abandon the constraints of realism and explore abstraction. Her abstract work attempts to stretch the imagination, break societal conditioning, create novelty, and to recreate worlds that exist only in her childhood memories and subconscious mind.