Carla has a background in textile design and holds a BFA from NSCAD University. Her learning has continued through years of studio practice, experimentation, studying other artists’ work, and following questions that arise while making. Carla’s work spans painting, drawing, collage, and object-like forms, often using materials such as acrylic, ink, charcoal, graphite, paper, fabric, and found or altered surfaces.

What Carla says she enjoys most about creating is the sense of discovery; she is drawn to moments when an image shifts—when something familiar becomes strange, a figure emerges or disappears, or a surface gains presence. Carla’s textile background informs her attention to surface, pattern, layering, structure, and the relationship between material and image.

She says “My process is physical and exploratory. I build surfaces through layers, then disrupt them through drawing, collage, cutting, removal, or reworking. I sometimes begin with recognizable forms, but I am less interested in literal depiction than in how they transform through the process. I often rearrange elements, obscure parts, cut into surfaces, or let shadows and gaps become part of the work. For me, making art is a way of thinking through materials. The finished piece matters, but so does the process of testing, revising, and allowing the work to surprise me.”