After attending art school, Carol Reeves thought that artists were supposed to create social commentary, tackle the problems of the world—in short, have a message. “My heart was filled with glorious flowers and sunlit glass just waiting to come out,” she recalls, “but I felt that anyone who aspired to be taken seriously in the contemporary art world needed to paint ‘seriously.’ Flowers just didn’t seem serious enough.” While agonizing over this dilemma she came upon the words of Mother Theresa: “In this life we cannot do great things, only small things with great love.” With this revelation, the floodgates opened, and Reeves began to produce oils that were exuberant rainbows of color.
Bound and determined to add to the world’s glory as a means to combat its ugliness, Reeves channels oversized still-lifes of a candy-glass world, all heart and light and impossibly pure air. Career success followed, confirming for Reeves that she had taken the right path.
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