painting and perfuming

I find lots of similarities between composing a perfume and painting. Creating accords is analogous with mixing  raw colours to make the perfect colour to convey what you are imagining or what from life you want to recreate. Paints, like perfume materials have different textures, opacities, weights.. Putting them together in a painting is about balancing instinct and control, with each colour/texture suggesting or demanding what needs to be done around it, what needs to happen next…And its all about your responses and memories and dreams... Yes, I would go so far as to say that perfume is the main medium I am working in at the moment.

Here in Scotland there is an embryonic interest in perfuming by independents, or smaller brands. There are a couple of people making perfume here I believe, and some critics and bloggers, but its yet to really take off. This interests me too, the combination of being a country in political flux and struggling to express itself culturally and the potential for something like perfumery. I’m fascinated by the idea of expressing the nature around me that I love, the feelings it evokes, and landscapes, and also the emotive and philosophical responses to that land and natural world.