VISUAL SCENT ART
Iwona Kmiec is a Polish-Canadian visual artist based in Toronto. She is on a mission to capture joy by rendering enduring scents.
Inspired by nature, she uses sense of smell as a metaphor for her work and applies this feature as life’s bonding factor.
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”
Helen Keller
WHY “VISUAL SCENT”?
The scent of fresh air, of the sea, of perfume lingering in the stairway... the emotional content of scent can evoke beautiful memories. Scent is something we cannot see, but we respond to it deeply, and that is what attracts me to it. Although scent itself is fleeting, it’s incredibly powerful. It not only affects our imagination, but also empowers us, connecting people and places in a personal timeline, giving joy.
A meaningful scent is not forgotten. When we smell something familiar, we recall the experience of a moment. For instance, I remember petrichor (a scent of the earth after the rain) as a powerful and pleasant reminder of a trip to Poland with my family in the Masuria Lakes region. Petrichor evoked a happy and peaceful experience that became a reference for my art, and inspired the scent metaphor I use in my creative explorations.
My abstract portraiture and landscapes refer to the beauty of nature to celebrate life and capture happy emotions. Like bottling a precious scent, I love to translate memories of people and places into tangible objects that evoke joy and represent a physical presence of moments that will last forever.