Active region coronal magnetic fields are expected to be in a twisted tangled state due to photospheric convective motions. These motions can drive the magnetic field to a statistically steady state where energy is released impulsively (Lu and Hamilton 1991). These relaxation events in the magnetic field can be interpreted as avalanches of many small reconnection events. We argue that the frequency distribution of these magnetic reconnection avalanches must be a power law. Furthermore, we calculate the expected distributions in a simple model of magnetic energy release events in a 3-dimensional complex magnetized plasma, and compare these to the distributions of solar flares. These distributions are found to match the observed power law distributions of solar flare energies, peak fluxes, and durations. This model implies that the energy-release process is fundamentally the same for flares of all sizes. Observational predictions of this model are discussed.