Interview - Fragrantica - English version

 Dear All, with great pleasure and, no doubt pride, I present you an interview I gave to Fragrantica.
Fragrantica is an international portal dedicated to perfumes. There are almost all perfumes catalogued, along with ingredients, release dates. There's also who created them - and most of all, you can get users' reviews. Beceause they are crucial in Fragrantica's existence, they have their forum. In short, a living goldmine of olfactive knowledge. You can find here interesting articles covering all perfumey topics - and in such article-interview I decided to participate upon Serguey Borisov's invitation, whom I'd like to thank with all my heart.

What is your art education and background, tell us about it.

I studied at Graphics Faculty of Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, I defended my diploma at Book Illustration Workshop lead by famous prof. Janusz Stanny.

 Eau du Soir Sisley

The relationship with perfumes, the first meeting with aromas, and emotions about it.

First perfume I encountered was Bourjois Soir de Paris which my Grandma and then my Mum used. My Dad gave me Soir de Paris when I was a teen, it was a tiny bottle of extrait, now of course empty. I still keep it, still there’s some smell left inside. I was strongly impressed with aromas I came across since youngest years – there was a laundry on my family home’s ground floor, with enormous copper cauldron filled with special gasoline used in dry cleaning. This laundry was run by my Granddad and always before school I dropped over to his place and he used to give me chocolate coated jellies, soaked in smell of gasoline – maybe at that moment for the first time I experienced strong interaction between two stimuli – olfactory and .gustative. It wasn’t, though, a most pleasant experience. Odd combination of chocolate, fruity jelly and chemical solvent.

 Lou Lou Cacharel

At art school most fragrant was graphics workshop – zinc plates treated with acid, ink, lacquer, warmed up rosin, denatured alcohol – each of these things had its specific, strong odour, creating together a mixture difficult to put in words. A sharp, technical, multi-layered smell, difficult to forget.

Even now, whenever I have the opportunity, I like to visit the Academy, walk in the building and inhale deeply this so familiar smell of turpentine, paints, canvas and wood. Sadly, I never found this aroma in any perfume. 

 Chergui Lutens

When was the first time when you get the idea to connect painting and perfumes?

I’ve always used some specific scents while painting. I saw quickly that both passions, perfumes/aromas and painting start to complement each other. It was obvious to me to perceive perfumes as colours. However, first consciously done painting as a portrait, a scent’s depiction, was Chanel No. 19 EDP.

One time in perfumery Quality the owner, Mrs. Missala, knowing I’m a painter and I use scents in creative work, gave me a sample of her own perfume – Qessence asking what I see 

 Qessence Missala

My vision was so coherent with her idea that she suggested that I paint an illustration of Qessence. It was 2011.

Two years later, in 2013, I was approached by Mon Credo perfumery with a proposal for an aromatic exhibition of visualized perfumes, I chose to paint 10 paintings. 

 Scent Costume National

At that time a term DUFTART was coined which I still use.
 Finally, last year, I had a duftart exhibition in Barcelona.

Aromatic exhibition means that next to each painting I placed a small, closed box containing a carrier of smell. Possibility of opening/closing this box allows to smell a chosen scent whis is currently being „looked at the painting”. Besides, closing this tiny box is necessary for the smells not to mingle with each other at the exhibition.

 Samsara Guerlain

Your first perfume depicted, what was it and what was the idea for the art?

As I mentioned before it was Chanel 19. 

Chanel's 19 alwas was and is a dear scent to me (I like chypres, especially green ones). At some point, spraying lighhandedly with 19 I was overpowered with a landscape's vision. Monumental hedge, dominating greyish green turning to black, cold blue. Sharp contours but refined in shape - this chypre looks like that, doesn't it? The object, of course - the hedge - is a 'licentia poetica', however the colour, shape, proportions - all this is perfectly embodied in 19 - necessarily in eau de toilette version. Eau de parfum's colours are somewhat blurred, contrasts slightly faded.

 19. Chanel

I thought at that moment that instead of picking a scent to a painting I will the other way around - so, I'll smell the perfume to see its pictorial character. It wasn't in fact an intellectual experience, more of a very strong emotional one - it took me few days to realize what had actually happened!

 Shalimar Guerlain (II)

As usual, first thing I see is colour, then comes the rest. (Now, after a few years, I somehow automatically see the whole picture from the very beginning due to synesthesia). Scent can be presented in two primary ways – first which I call “poetic”, is based on an association with a situation, sometimes a face or a landscape. Like with taste, for instance jam be associated with childhood, tea at Grandma’s, summer’s evening and so on. Second way is “describing” or, more specifically, seeing parameters – and again, like with taste, we can describe as sweet, sour, velvety or hot.

 Poison Dior

Same with perfume – colour, specific solid block or lines, shapes. Lately, for example, I found a smell which “looked” like diagonally cut cylinder, purple, slightly oblate, with texture of play-doh, laying on an aquamarine, smooth bedding. Or a graphite gray cloud of blurry contour, or orange, hard sphere, glowing, with tiny tentacles.

I’m by now working on the first kind of vision – an association, keeping this association, however, to be in strict conformity of colours, kinds of lines, silhouettes, splashes and, of course, the general feel of it. I’m also planning a visual realization those other visions, abstract and free of associations.

How do you choose the next perfume to make a picture?

The condition which must to be met is how articulate, pronounced the scent is. I can’t imagine painting to something bland, without character! Of course, I need to appreciate and like this smell enough to find it pleasant to “be in its company”. I like to paint perfumes which are well known. In This way, my online posts (since internet has no olfactory properties) provoke discussions, because my spectators know what perfumes I’m painting.

 Dune Dior

I have a project in mind, to create scents for exhibition’s need. It would of course limit number of participants. In today’s times, when one can learn almost everything online, an invitation to- and exclusively to the real world seems to be a sensation, enticing due to its elite character. Because only people in painting’s immediate proximity can get my message.

How many painted perfumes did you make? Which do you consider the best? Do you make the author copies of them?

I’ve painted so far about 40 duftarts, both to niche and mainstream perfumes, including the most revered classics. I find best Poison Dior, Habanita Molinard, Dune Dior, Shalimar Guerlain, Scent and Scent Intense Costume National, Samsara Guerlain and Opium YSL. 

 Habanita Molinard (old version)

I’m planning now, in relation to a new project of mine, duftarts to industrial, spacious, metallic, modern scents. I’m tempted to illustrate some “milestones” of perfumery – Bandit Piguet, Obsession CK, Dolce Vita Dior and others. Author copies are used with prints (meaning, first prints, before the matrix wears down) – in workshop graphics. When it comes to paintings, photographs and descriptions of creative process published at my blog Brulion Malarski are sufficient enough to me.
 
How often does people say the right perfume name of the perfumes, just looking at your pictures?
People, who are familiar with perfumes I illustrate, often say that my vision fits perfectly to the scent. Maybe I’ll put it another way – it never happened that somebody said it was a completely different story.

 Opium YSL

 
Directly at the exhibition spectators told me they know what scent to expect – and when they were reaching for a sample of perfume they smiled “That’s what I thought”.

Could you use perfumes as paint additives? Or overspray them?
No, never. First, because there’s no such need. Always at the exhibition and during my work on the painting there's a scent carrier present. Besides, it’s essential that at the time of the duftarts’ presentation that perfumes/scents never mixed with each other – it would cause cacophony and would spoil the effect. Sometimes I attach a perfume’s sample to the painting while shipping it to the owner and I give him or her a hint how to provide my duftart some scented surroundings. It’s easiest to fasten a piece of perfume soaked chamois or felt at painting’s back.

Perfumes as myths are developing in time. artists usually use the culmination as the moment to show - what is your point of view and your style to show the essence of perfumes?
Usually I don’t mind which scents are in fashion. Duftart, after all, isn’t a perfume advertisement. When I choose scents for duftarts, I only go by if a given perfume moves my imagination in a legible way for spectators. I don’t think about paintings’ style – most important is vision, I adjust colours, moods and means of expression to it. It’s obvious to me – I have illustrator’s temperament (I did my diploma at illustration workshop, mind you). My paintings’ style is in my work’s outcome, not its beginning. You can reach for Art Deco with such scents as Mitsouko or Shalimar, of course. But there’s no such need if I deal with timeless perfumes.

 Shalimar Guerlain (I)

Do you have colleagues at perfume painting?
No, it’s a loner’s work. I’m the only one, as far as I know, I contacted Miguel Matos regarding Synesthesia project. I think that people who deal with painting and are interested in perfumery, are never as much interested as I am. There are some visual artists who create their own perfumes but they don’t visualize somebody else’s scents. I’m in touch, though, with people who are passionate about perfumes and it is extremely crucial to me, inspiring and refreshing to me.

 Angel Liqueur Mugler