Texture as Memory: Why I Layer Surfaces in My Work

By Sebastien Montel

Texture is time you can touch.

Every layer I apply holds a memory, of a moment, a thought, or an emotion I didn’t want to lose. My surfaces are built slowly, deliberately, like the layers of experience that shape who we are.

As a contemporary expressionist painter, I use texture to evoke depth, not just visual, but emotional. It’s a record of feeling. Beneath each visible layer lies another, hidden one. Some are scraped away, others remain buried, just as memory fades or transforms over time.

This tactile process has roots in my heritage as a French artist, where history, architecture, and decay coexist beautifully. Living now between Palm Springs and Los Angeles, I’m surrounded by light that exposes everything, cracks, shadows, edges. That tension between fragility and exposure defines my work.

In mixed media art, layering becomes a psychological act. I work with paint, plaster, charcoal, and paper to build surfaces that resist smoothness. The imperfections, the ridges, scratches, and tears, are essential. They remind me that emotion, like texture, is not meant to be flawless.

I think often about the psychology of color in art when building these layers. Texture changes how color behaves, how it absorbs, reflects, or conceals light. The deeper the texture, the more unpredictable the emotion. Gold can turn somber in shadow; black can glow with warmth.

Collectors who engage with modern expressionist art for collectors often find themselves drawn closer to the surface. They want to touch it, to trace the layers, to see what was hidden or revealed. That instinct is what collecting emotional art is all about, connection through texture, through presence.

In both the Palm Springs art scene and LA art scene, I’ve seen how audiences respond differently to texture. Some see abstraction; others feel memory. For me, it’s both. Texture is a diary written in layers, fragments of time and emotion preserved in pigment.

Every painting I make is, in a way, an act of remembrance. The surface becomes a living document, proof that feeling, once expressed, leaves a mark.