An Artist is an artist is an artist

...it doesn't matter which way you look at it, being an artist is having an all consuming fire burning in my soul. Find me a true artist that relaxes while he works and I'll find you an Irish man that can't dance a jig for a pint of porter if he was stuck. I remember reading somewhere about a world famous perfumer (I can't remember his name) who described himself as being in a constant state of tension until the perfume he was working on was complete, whether it took six days or six years. This December I found out what that meant and I nearly drove my family mad.

To say I was in a constant state of tension is something of an understatement. First of all I spent a week or two thinking I could relax into the work. I put several trial blends together for my client to choose from, based on the profile I had built from the information she had given me about herself. She chose just one of the samples and gave me some feed back. Then it was up to me. That's when the 'relaxing into it' idea went out the window and the artist crawled under my skin. For three days solid, I worked, going to bed at 2.00am each night but the finished perfume seemed to be getting further from my grasp. Like a sketch artist throwing away page after page of mistakes, little glass bottles of dud juice were starting to accumulate. Each night I would take the best work of the day to bed. A little vial of liquid. I would carry it with me and apply it to the back of my hand again and again, I would smell and smell repeatedly. Like a painter standing back looking at his work, scrutinizing every detail until deep uncertainty sets in. I would place the vial on my the bed post and think about it until I fell asleep. Then when I slept I would dream of drops and glass rainbows and strange dark animals wearing floral headdress's and I would try to make sense of the dreams in the morning and wondered if they were telling me about the secret ingredient that I needed to add. But there was no such luck for me.

On the morning of day three, despair took hold of me. I started beating myself up, mentally, (I didn't see the mad artist when I looked in the mirror). I asked for help from different quarters and lots of ideas came but I was like the musician sitting on stage getting pianos fired at him from all sides and still not knowing what song to play. On the evening of that day, my husband was beginning to worry about the state of my health and whether or not I was still in touch with reality. I told him I was but secretly I wasn't even sure myself.

On the morning of the fourth day he stopped me as I was going up to my studio (I had that glazed look in my eye again) and he said something like this... "You have to make something that is going to get in touch with her soul, do you know who she is, or, some childhood memory of hers or something?" (As usual his calming voice struck something in my brain, although I wouldn't have liked to admit it at the time.) I snapped "of course I know all about her, I asked her everything," I sounded angry but really I was listening to his cool voice of reason. "Well, what does she do for a living?" he asked me then." I don't know that, I didn't ask her that! What's that got to do with anything?!" "Well what's her favorite color then?" he asked me, in his usual 'pressing my buttons' kind of way. I stopped, and the penny suddenly dropped. I said "I know what her favorite colors are, she likes black and white." I knew then the perfume was going to be something classic and something with lots of definition...all at once I knew what I was going to do.

I went into my studio that day with confidence. I knew that the days of work that had gone before had not been a waste, I had learned so much. That afternoon I had to take my son to the hospital for his check up. I took the scent strips of the perfect middle and perfect top accords with me and stuck them into the steering wheel. I talked about the perfume to my son all the way to the hospital instead of his mending arm. (poor fellow, but he's a budding artist too so I think he understood). I got straight back to work when we got home.

It was 1.30 am before I went to bed that night, this time I didn't take the last vial to bed with me. I left it in on my work bench and for the first time in 5 days I felt the tension rolling away from me. The next morning I went to my studio to check how thing were marrying. My heart sank when I smelled. I checked my notes, furiously, I began to tear out my hair and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. Then suddenly I stopped. I looked at my notes again. I realised that I had calculated 3 drops of something but I had only added 2 in the final blend. I took the vial and I added that single drop. And I waited. I knew before I smelled it that it was done. It was ready. I could feel it. When I smelled it, it sang just as I expected it to.
For me the work was complete, the perfume was finished at last and for my husband and my family I was back to myself again.

Here are the notes I used in the perfume: Bergamot, Pink grapefruit, Sweet mint, Orange blossom, Rose de mai, Jasmine grandiflorum, Violet leaf, Alpine lavender, Sandalwood, Vanilla absolute, Labdanum, Coco absolute, Tolu balsam

The resulting perfume has a character that is fresh and light, a classic floral laced with hints of coco and mint.
I even gave it a name: 'Vanilla Lace'