Born in Germany and based nowhere in particular, Esrin (known under the name esrinue) translates the intangible as the self-proclaimed “Paintress of Scents.” Her nomadic lifestyle provides for a constant stream of inspiration from the landscapes she travels through. Her paintings, much like herself, are transient in nature: free flowing, ever changing.
I had the pleasure of sharing space with Esrin for one month in 2023 at Buinho, an art residency in Portugal, and was lucky enough to witness her process in person. The following is a conversation from that time.
—Lee Reid, Founding Editor
Tell me, total stranger, whom I’ve never met and know nothing of, about the path your art career has taken.
esrinue: I think I always knew that I would work in the creative field. I just never really knew in which direction I would go. And I still try to figure that out.
I think the first “serious” step was to study at the Art Academy. In 2019 I obtained my Master’s Degree in Fine Arts and then I moved to Berlin, where I worked in a creative agency. I knew pretty quick, that I was not made to work in an agency, and my supervisor knew, too! So after a year I left because I was pursuing something bigger; something that came from inside.
And so I rented an atelier space in Berlin and started working on paintings. Intuitively I started to paint the smells of my friends. And that is what I do still.
While most travel illustrators, painters, and photographers transcribe what they see, esrinue specializes in what you don’t. By scent alone, she is able to capture the essence of a place, that which cannot be immediately perceived but is nevertheless felt. But I still had to ask, why scent of all the senses?
esrinue: I just find it interesting how smell is so overlooked, even though it can trigger very deep emotions and memories. And it also shapes us. We just don’t focus on it, because it’s ephemeral: It is there one moment and disappears in the next, and we can’t get a hold of it.
“What I couldn’t describe in the past with my own words makes so much sense today. Sometimes you have to find a new language to express yourself…”
How would you define your current series of paintings?
esrinue: I call my new series of paintings Smellscapes. Smellscapes are the landscapes of smell. So what I do is that I go to places, let’s say a town, and I try to capture the smell of this town. Then I translate that smell into colors and shapes. At the moment I am in Messejana, a small town in Portugal. This town is very purple and the shapes of rounded triangles are very present here.
These paintings look like landscapes from above, hence smellscapes.
Watching your creative process is pretty inspiring. It seems you’re continuously experimenting with pigments and techniques to implement them in your Smellscapes. How is your art evolving based on what you’ve learned through trial and error?
esrinue: Correct, so at the moment I am experimenting with pigments. In order to create more connection between my Smellscape paintings, the surroundings they represent, and me as the creator, I started collecting plants to make my own pigments and use those in my paintings. So far I’ve made around ten different pigment shades from tulips, carrots, roses & dandelions, eucalyptus bark, peonies, etc..
The idea is to use the resources of a city, village, street or home to create the corresponding smellscape painting. This way I also get to understand the surroundings better and can expand into spaces I haven’t seen before. I guess I am much into making an effort to connect the dots. This way I give my work more meaning.
Favorite discovery?
esrinue: My favorite discovery? That I make the most awesome paintings when I am not thinking in the process, when I follow my heart and just shut off my brain. :)
Favorite failure?
esrinue: I like that you say “favorite failure,” because my failures have been extraordinarily good; I’ve learned from them big time. The best one so far: frantically trying to make something to please the masses. Works every time, NOT! It just proves that I am here to make whatever I desire and what I love to do, nothing else.
Speaking of your process, how do you go about creating a Soulseed?
esrinue: Soulseeds are the smaller versions of Smellscapes. Same procedure, but with humans. That is how I started in the first place: I painted the smells of my friends and then I realized that what I was painting was their souls. And so I connected smell and soul: Both are intangible and invisible. According to my perception, there is a deep connection.
My Sister’s Seed
“My sister's name is Deniz. Deniz is the turkish word for ocean. My name's meaning is tear drop. My sister and I, we are both salty. She is the big whole, I am the many small pieces. She is the ever changing flood, I am the big emotions.
She is the strong current that catches my pieces. I needed a certain time to understand what my sister means and is to me. How her sheer existence shaped me as a person. And how to put the pieces from the past together we had formed as individuals and as siblings.
If you are familiar with me, you know that I have a strong desire, love and connection to the ocean. I have that love and connection to my sister; I love her to the deepest part of the ocean and back to the surface.”
John’s Seed
“This is a very special seed to me. I think this was the first seed I consciously felt. And the human it belongs to has been a driving force in the past years of my life and in the process of soulseeds. John‘s seed represents an adventure in a very icy, cold place. Everything is covered in ice and snow, which makes it a very quiet place, too. Behind a little hill there is a pretty big grey and white wolf with steel blue eyes, like Larimar stones. I can only see his head and upper body. He’s not frightening, but very protective of this spot. When I look behind me, there is a deep turquoise lake, which -despite of the coldness- is still in motion.
Some souls only translate into one color. This is one of them.
The contradictive part of this is that the person behind this seed is one of the most warmest and generous I know of.
A lot of emotions and connections sit in this particular painting.”
Daniel van Hauten‘s seed
“Daniel has a very distinctive and complex scent. Not only do I connect it with colors, but with a whole scenario, which looks like this: a warm, humid, sunny day in autumn. The first orange and red leaves are falling from the high trees; the wind catches and carries them around. My bare feet are standing on wet, soft moss. I like it here.”
Serra Vida, Marvão, Portugal.
“Anywhere studio”
How does being nomadic influence your work?
esrinue: Traveling influences my work in so far as I am able to smell new people and new cities. That is the core of my work.
And also realizing how a new city, a new place influences my work is awesome. As mentioned before, right now, here in Messejana, it is all purple. And every painting I’ve made here was filled with purple. All the other paintings without purple didn’t feel right. My work is very dependent on where I am.
Where to next?
esrinue: After my residency in Buinho I will go back to Germany. I have a solo exhibition in my hometown Bonn this summer. There I will present my Smellscape work about Bonn.
After that I want to come back to Portugal. I feel like there is so much more to explore, to see, smell, and feel :) It's an interesting place!
During my time at Buinho I collected so many ideas. Honestly, I don't even know what to do with it, but I feel a strong desire to go into the direction of installations. I want my viewers to feel color the way that I feel it, and an interactive installation could be the solution in order to achieve that.
Serra Vida, Marvão, Portugal.
Follow esrinue’s art on instagram to stay current on her latest adventure and creation. You can find her portfolio at www.esrinue.com and her instagram @esrin.ue.
