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 featured in Roots and Routes, November 15 - December 14, 2025, Mid-Street Lab at The Vault in conjunction with the Winter Artist Open Houses, and CANcELLEd: Adjust the Focus, (BWA) Brighton Women Artists, November 15-30, 2025, at Sussex Innovation Centre, University of Sussex. She has been featured in publications such as New Visionary Magazine, Issue 13: The Women’s Issue, Winter 2025, Artist, Mother, Proud & Serious, Vol. 2, 2024; PoetryXCollage, Vol. 2, Kolaj Magazine, 2022; and Collage at 100: Strange Glue (Traditional and Avant-Garde Collage) Virtual Annex, exhibition catalogue, curated by Todd Bartel, 2012. She was selected for residencies including PoetryxCollage (online) with Kolaj Magazine, 2022; and Alterworks Studios, NYC in 2020. Carla currently works out of her home in Brighton, which she shares with her husband and two young daughters.