Utilising the craft of perfumery as a means to create portraiture has been at the heart of my creative practice and intentions for about 2 years now. While this will persist in 2017 I’m increasingly aware of the capacity perfume has to relate to other manners of creative practice. As such, I have developed a hunch; can scent communicate colour and as such, can perfumes be created that represent the colour spectrum?
Scent can certainly evoke colour; but the evocative qualities of scent have been readily explored and are open to subjection. Rather, the perfumes I wish to create must be a direct translation of colour – an objective tool that can be utilised by artists as a basis for instigating creative thought, processes and action. Essentially, the perfumes must directly correlate to the colour wheel; something fundamental and a reference to how artists apply, treat and understand perfume as a potential material.
Quite a conceptual premise, then – something of a critical appraisal of how scent and colour are intrinsically linked as tools for communication. And, as a means to act on my initial hunch here’s a bit of initial empirical research – 7 perfumes denoting the 7 colours of the colour spectrum:
As ever, the aim is to speculate on a reality whereby scent is our means of communication in order to reveal alternative modes of communication, alternative ways of regarding perfume and an informed understanding of the potential of scent in our lives.