Paul Mccormick

My brain converts smell into colour. There is a precedent for this act of translation in the work of Kandinsky or Klee who sought to evoke another sense - sound - through colour. However smell is a much more underused sense in painting. My practice aims to rectify this.
Conceptual "˜odour artist' Sissel Tolaas has said there is no such thing as a "˜good' smell or a "˜bad' smell and that notions of these are encultured. Similarly, I'm not interested in whether a smell is a comforting one. My series do not ascribe different values to Perfume and Cigarettes. However, I am attracted to eponymous smells, the kind one might come across almost daily in the course of their routine. There is nothing exotic about such smells: they appear in the street, in offices, linger in the home. They are also instantly recognizable smells, ones easy to take for granted: beer, chips, bleach, tomato soup.
My process is entirely reliant on bringing those smells into the studio. This either involves the act of making (brewing coffee, baking bread) or of gathering (unwrapping bags of chips bought at the chippie). I don't taste food stuffs as this would detract from my ability to focus on how they smell. I then attempt to analyse the smell in an almost s...