Practices in Smelling: Immersion

Making the visual more vivid.

Oil on Canvas Painting by A. Galia

I feel lucky because my husband loves to paint with oil on canvas, and our walls are filled with his creations (ie. above).

So the other day I was sitting admiring the painting, when I got this idea to experiment with smelling. I went to the kitchen and grabbed some of my herbs and spices, brought them back, and began, one by one, lifting them up to my nose while I viewed the composition.

It was fascinating.

As I smelled dried rosemary, the green elements became more vivid. Then I scratched the peel of a lemon and smelled - the yellow suddenly popped from the canvas. Even when I smelled whole black peppercorns, the subtle dark nuances began to emerge. It turns out that smelling can enhance color perception.

There are all kinds of studies out there evaluating how smells can influence what we see. Here just a few, if you’re the curious type and like to go down rabbit holes like I do:

Scents can influence our perception of color

Scents can influence visual perception of movement

Scents can influence visual perception by affecting how visual scenes are analyzed and processed

Speaking Of Which …

In this week’s episode of An Aromatic Life, In-Glorious Smell-O-Vision co-director and producer Tammy Burnstock, and historical scent technology aficionado Jas Brooks, share how bringing scent into movie theaters deepens our connection to the story on screen.
Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

But then I thought, what if I look at an old photo and just try to conjure the smell in my head. I try to imagine what the olfactory experience might have been like. Will that work?

5 year old me in my backyard in Hamburg, Germany

I stared at the photo for a few minutes and imagined bringing the memory to life through smell. The sharp, fresh green notes of the grass, the floral, sweet whiffs of the apple blossoms on the trees, the subtle hint of earthiness from the dirt beneath my feet.

It turns out even this has been studied: Imagining a smell while looking at an image can make the memory feel sharper and more emotional, showing how scents can bring visuals to life in our mind.

There are so many creative ways we can bring our dominantly visual world to life more - make it more vivid, more emotional, and deeply engaging simply by connecting smelling.

So, in this month’s Practices in Smelling, I invite you to exercise your smell muscle and deepen your engagement with your visual world. Here are a few simple exercises you can try out.