Abstract Impressionist artist
Mathieu Karsenti is an abstract impressionist artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. He holds a French Baccalauréat F12 in Applied Arts and a BA (Hons) in Furniture design and technology.
His visual art is in direct correlation with his musical output as a composer. Visually, he translates his musical voice using various media, from collage to pencil, inks and watercolors. Block elements harmonize at counterpoint with fluid areas of color, and rhythmic brushstrokes are offset by the surrounding empty space of the paper. Like in his music projects, he composes internal abstract landscapes that are perceived as ‘impressions’ or undefinable moments open to interpretation by the viewer or the listener. Although Mathieu has a successful career in film and TV scoring, his art is never far away and he has recently decided to present his internal visual worlds inspired by music to a new public.
Some artwork is available for purchase at:
Improvisation – 42×59.4cm – watercolour, collage
SOLD
‘My work is inspired by music so I often ‘compose’ my visual ideas whilst listening to music. I typically start with collaging selected pieces of images from magazines, arrange them in a random way and amplify the movement, colours or shapes present in the collage parts. This gives way to new ideas guided by the musical colours I am listening to at the same time’.
La Mer après Debussy – 42×59.4cm – watercolour, collage
SOLD
‘Debussy’s incredible symphonic suite ‘La Mer’ was the direct inspiration for this larger format painting. As before, the process started out with collaging image parts and extending what I see with watercolour and pencil. The many complex movements, colours and shapes ‘La Mer’ conveys are hard to render visually so my interpretation is an approximation or a direct impression which could have taken many other forms’.
Jeux après Debussy – 42×59.4cm – watercolour, collage
SOLD
‘Debussy’s ‘Jeux’ is an astonishingly surprising and playful composition. The many twists and turns the music takes led me to create a piece that would emulate an ever-evolving visual taking you on a complex journey that is still understandable at its core’.
Flow series – 21×29.7cm – watercolour
3 SOLD
‘The Flow series are more instinctive and less graphically guided. Intuition rules the path of brush movements and colour combinations’.
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
Murasaki series – 24x32cm – watercolour
‘Purple or murasaki in Japanese promised to me so many possibilities which I was keen to explore here with no restraint’.
© Copyright Mathieu Karsenti 2025
