Mathieu Karsenti
Abstract painter and atmospheric composer
Mathieu Karsenti is an abstract artist living and working in Montpellier, France. Trained in Applied Arts in France and later graduating with a BA (Hons) in Furniture Design and Technology, his practice exists at the intersection of painting and music.
Alongside an internationally recognised career as a composer for film and television, Karsenti has developed a visual language deeply informed by rhythm, movement, and synesthesia. Working with watercolor, ink, collage, and mixed media, he creates gestural compositions where dense blocks of form interact with fluid passages of colour and silence. Much like a musical score, each work unfolds through tension, harmony, interruption, and space.
His paintings evoke inner landscapes suspended between abstraction and sensation — fragments of movement, memory, and atmosphere that remain deliberately open to interpretation. Rooted in spontaneity and the physicality of the gesture, his work seeks not to represent, but to translate the emotional and energetic essence of sound into visual form.
Some artwork is available for purchase at:
The Artling
Le Réservoir
Featured in Aedra Fine Arts catalogue and Barbagelata Art magazine.
Interview in Curatory Magazine Vol 2
Exhibition at Barnsdall Arts Centre, Los Angeles CA.
Featured in Domio Gallery’s ‘Restless’ online exhibition
Or for specific commissions please contact: info@mathieukarsenti.com
‘Karsenti’s dual fluency in music and visual art situates him within a broader conversation about synesthetic experiences and the porous boundaries between sensory modalities. His works invite us not only to see but to hear with our eyes – to perceive a silent music unfolding across paper, where composition, color, and gesture vibrate with a hidden, rhythmic life.’ – Barbagelata Art magazine
Improvisation – 42×59.4cm – watercolour, collage
SOLD
‘Music is at the core of my visual practice, and I often “compose” paintings while listening to sound. I usually begin by collaging fragments of found images from magazines, arranging them intuitively before responding to the movements, colours, and shapes that emerge. Guided by the music playing in the moment, these initial structures evolve into fluid visual compositions where rhythm, tension, and atmosphere become translated into gesture and form.’
La Mer après Debussy – 42×59.4cm – watercolour, collage
SOLD
‘Claude Debussy’s symphonic masterpiece La Mer served as the direct inspiration for this large-format painting. As with much of my work, the process began through collage—assembling fragments of imagery before extending and transforming them with watercolor and pencil. The shifting movements, textures, and tonal colours conveyed in the music resist literal translation, so the painting emerges instead as an intuitive impression: a sensory response to the atmosphere and energy of the composition, open to multiple possible forms and interpretations.’
Jeux après Debussy – 42×59.4cm – watercolour, collage
SOLD
‘Jeux by Claude Debussy is a remarkably playful and unpredictable composition, full of sudden shifts and unexpected transformations. Its constantly evolving musical language inspired me to create a work that mirrors this sense of movement and continual change — a visual journey unfolding through layered forms, gestures, and tensions, while still retaining an underlying sense of coherence and balance.’
Flow series – 21×29.7cm – watercolour
3 SOLD
‘The Flow series embraces a more instinctive and spontaneous approach, less guided by graphic structure or predetermined composition. Here, intuition directs the movement of the brush and the interaction of colours, allowing forms and energies to emerge organically through gesture and fluidity.’
Improv series – 21×29.7cm – watercolour, collage
Untitled series – 24x32cm – watercolour, collage
Purple Explorations – 1-2): 22.8×30.5cm, 3-5): 24x32cm – watercolour, ink
Black and White explorations – 24x32cm – Indian ink
De-Reconstruct series – 24x32cm – Indian ink, Walnut ink, pens, pencils, collage
‘This series was inspired by the tragedy of the Los Angeles fires in early 2025. Created almost subconsciously, the three works evoke both destruction and the fragile process of reconstruction that follows such a disaster. Suspended between presence and disappearance, the paintings explore the tension between memory and erasure — traces of what once existed slowly dissolving while new forms begin to emerge.’
Murasaki series – 24x32cm – watercolour
