Carol began creating artwork as soon as she was old enough to hold a crayon and started painting in oils with the Findlay (Ohio) Art League at age ten. You can see one of her first "happy place portraits" painted at that age in her studio. She earned her degree in Fine Arts from Indiana University in Bloomington and then spent years working in the computer graphics and printing industries before painting professionally.

That knowledge informs her work today. For example, Abbott's acrylic paintings usually begin with a carefully selected color that she paints over using imprimatura. It’s not uncommon to see pink, light green, vivid red, or turquoise as her starting point.  Her preferred medium is acrylics because they provide the benefits of watercolor’s transparency with the opacity of oils for making changes. This allows Carol to paint instinctively and emotionally without envisioning how a piece will look when completed. Her paintings are sometimes finished in oils.

People often say "they look happy" or "I like the happy colors" when seeing Carol's work. She feels blessed to paint because she sees art as communication that speaks beyond words about things that transcend language and even the boundaries of a person's lifetime.