Kirsty Matheson

I paint music. Music is my subject. As a musician I hear all the layers, the style of music and as an artist I use paint, form, colour, to capture the emotional essence that I hear.

I want you to see what I hear.

At music college I was taught the art of listening to the multiple layers in a piece of music. As a musician, I have been taught to identify and then replicate stylistic differences between composers and time periods. I listen in three dimensions identifying the historical markers of each piece and use this knowledge to translate an emotional picture into paint.  

I have synesthesia. When listening to music I can open a door in my mind and I find a world of different colours. These colours also then interact with structure and form in the same way as pitch interacts with rhythm and orchestration, to create an artwork which captures the music itself in all its complexity.

They differ depending on the style of each composer. Mozart and Shostakovich demand to be as different in art as they are in music. Anything less than this approach would not be faithful to the music they represent.