Art of scent: Therese Vandling for Laboratory Perfumes

When our fragrant friends at LP were in need of a visual spruce-up for their site and brochure, they asked us to recommend an artist who could tackle the tricky brief of interpreting the complex blending of scent into a visual format. Therese was the obvious choice. 

The result of the pairing is a series of compelling and highly evocative images that express the natural ingredients of the fragrances and the intangible impression that scent imparts.

Therese has explained the ideas behind her artwork over on the Lab, (Laboratory Perfumes’ online platform for exploring the artistic possibilities of fragrance), but here’s a taster (or a sniff?) of the thinking behind her creative process:

“Smell is such a powerful sense for me, a sudden familiar scent can really throw me back to another place and time in a super-physical way. I can actually feel being somewhere else even if just for a second; it can be quite unnerving and emotional. In that sense I think it’s both a very visual and physical experience.

I was interested in the idea of visualising how scent moves in a physical space; what that might look like. It’s a very abstract and subjective concept so I had to really use my gut instinct to do what felt right for me and hope that it translated to other people too. You might not look at the imagery and instantly know exactly what it’s supposed to be or say, but it should leave you with a feeling that is right for the scents. It’s a bit difficult to explain in words. Nature is obviously a big source of inspiration for both me and Laboratory Perfumes, so it made sense to look for inspiration there. Using forms and patterns created in nature felt right.”