Carla E. Reyes is a Brighton-based mixed-media artist, originally from New York City. Her work emerges from deep sensory engagement with aspects of everyday life—urban spaces, moments in nature, and the domestic realm—and an interest in how lived experience becomes embedded in surface, texture, and form. She builds semi-abstract works through layered, hands-on processes that respond to form and surface, treating painting as a tactile, embodied practice. The work draws from experience, observation, and personal reflection, moving between the domestic, social, and natural. She creates across painting, collage, and sculpture, using a wide range of materials and processes to explore how meaning is carried through surface, accumulation, and transformation over time.

 

Carla received her BFA in Restoration and Fine Arts from F.I.T., NYC, MA in Art Education from CUNY City College of New York, NYC, and her MFA in Painting from CUNY Lehman College, NYC. She has an exhibition history that spans over 20 years in NYC and Eastern United States, and more recently in the United Kingdom. Recent exhibitions included The Art of the Educator exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NYC - a juried exhibition of art created by NYC public school art teachers, and Mother/Father: Working Artists in Parenthood group show at WomensWork.Art gallery in Poughkeepsie, NY. Since relocating to Brighton, UK, she has been included in the Odyssey exhibition at Hastings Contemporary and exhibited with Brighton Women Artists (BWA) at the Fishing Quarter Gallery and the University of Sussex, and Mid-Street Lab at Vault Gallery. She was also a Jackson’s Art Prize Extended Longlist finalist in 2026. Her work has been featured in publications such as New Visionary Magazine, Sfumato Art Creatives, Mother, Proud & Serious, and Kolaj Magazine. She has participated in residencies with Kolaj Magazine and Alterworks Studios, NYC. Carla currently works from her home studio in Brighton, where she lives with her husband and daughters.