Featured Artist Karla Reid

Artist Karla Reid uses bright contrasts and mixed media to create portraits of people, capturing their aura through the energy of color. Find out more about this artist by visiting her website.

 

 

I consider my artistic talent to be a gift from God. My journey as an artist started as a child after my mother bought me a set of chalk pastels and a box of charcoals. I began painting the varying colors I saw in people’s faces, almost like auras. To me color has an energy. I not only see color—I feel color. I remember a time when seeing certain color combinations would make me physically ill, so I have always had a strong reaction it.

 

 

I have always been inspired by the people and places around me. Upon reflection, I have been documenting my own feelings through art since a very early age.

 

 

The people that I paint are from my own imagination and are what I now consider visual autobiographies. They document my life and where I am emotionally. When I am creating, I am immersed in the moment and the rest of the world is suspended. It is as though I am in a trance.

 

 

As a child, pouring my thoughts and emotions into my art acted as a means for survival. It was a way to express myself when I could not speak about the things that were going on around me.

 

 

What fuels my art and gives me the passion for what I do is my need to combat the negative things that were said and done to me as a child at the hands of my father. He told me that I wasn’t beautiful or talented and that I would never be successful, so I strive to show and express what I truly am through my work.

 

 

Many years later I have become more vocal about my life. yet I still retain that unintentional ability to capture my own emotions in my art.

 

 

For years I only worked with chalk and oil pastels. I then started to mix the pastels with brightly colored and textured papers, fabrics and acrylic paint. Sometimes I collect other objects such as small metal objects and use them in my art. For example, I have created a painting by gluing a bunch of old keys to a wood panel and then painted a face with acrylic paint on top of the keys.

 

 

My goals for the next few years are to continue to pour myself into my art and to do larger scale paintings that include the entire body from head to toe of my subject, either standing up, sitting or laying down. I am to travel to new beautiful and unique places that will inspire me to paint more landscapes. I have always dreamed of going to Tuscany, Africa, Japan, New Zealand, Utah and Colorado to be inspired by the landscapes.

 

 

I also want to explore my abstract pieces more. I have a vision to make sculptural pieces of people that are created with parts that are old, discarded and from the junkyard.  I will be learning how to weld metal objects together and then paint them.

 

 

I also have goals to continue to show my artwork in more places across the globe.

 

Artist Karla Reid invites you to follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

 

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