Longing Is the Violet

Project Statement

This is a personal exploration of longing. I am interested in the phenomenon of how a smell can awaken an instant reaction, feeling, or memory. I think of the violet as a metaphor for this longing, how we can only smell the concentrated fragrance of a violet for a few seconds before it short circuits our smell receptors, and the scent becomes imperceptible to us. That is, until minutes later, it bursts back in at full force, and the flirtatious cycle starts over again. Acting as vignettes, these drawings detail a charged and fleeting moment in time, outside of storytelling or narrative, and fade at the periphery. I am reckoning with the dissolution of memory, physical objects, the passage of time, and longing for short bursts of the violet scent in between the imperceptible scentless void.

Artist Bio

Flannery Smith is an artist born and raised in Portland, OR. She works with drawing, printmaking, and collage. She is interested in the physical ties to our emotional lives through the act of observing. She reckons with her own perception of time, connection, memory, and the imperceptible forces in life.