Son decided my studio smelled like old salami. He's not wrong.
My daughter came in today, sniffed the air, and said it smells like old salami in here. She's not wrong. Linseed oil, turpentine, a week-old coffee, the particular smell of a rag you meant to throw out on Tuesday. It's not salami exactly but I understand the comparison.
Thing is, I've started to associate that smell with the good hours. The quiet ones after dinner when nobody needs anything and I can just push paint around. When I was younger I wanted the studio to smell like nothing, like a gallery. Now I think a studio that smells like nothing is a room that doesn't get used.
What does the air in your workspace say about you? Mine apparently says cured meat and turpentine, and honestly I'm fine with it.
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The smell thing is real. In the conservation studio where I work part-time there's a permanent scent of old paper and hide glue and something faintly sour I've never been able to name. New people always comment on it. I stopped noticing it years ago, which I think is the point, it's the smell of a room that holds a lot of work.
Mine at home smells mostly like paper dust and cold coffee. Probably also not great. But I know exactly what you mean about the gallery association. I used to want that too, clean and white and silent. Now a sterile studio just reads as unused to me. The funk means something happened in there.
The sour thing is probably the paper, yeah. Old paper does that, it oxidizes and gives off that vinegar-ish smell. But hide glue is a beautiful one, I'd rather have that than my usual pastel dust situation. Mine smells like fixative and chalk and I'm fairly sure some of my pastels have gone slightly rancid in their box, which is a smell I cannot place and honestly do not want to investigate further.
You're right about the sterile thing though. I remember visiting a gallery once and thinking how nice it must be to work somewhere that clean. Now I think a clean studio just means nobody's been brave in it for a while.
What do you actually conserve? If you don't mind me asking. I work in dry media, the idea of anyone touching my pieces with solvents after I'm done is a bit terrifying but also kind of nice, like someone will care enough to keep them going.
The rancid pastel thing is a mystery I'm choosing not to solve with you, no offense. There are some smells that belong to the work and some that belong in a bin and pastels gone off are firmly in the second camp.
But you've hit the real thing there. A clean studio is a studio that's been abandoned, or one where someone spends more time tidying than painting. I used to think the smell meant I was doing something wrong, that a real professional would have a spotless room. Now I think the opposite. The smell is the record of hours actually spent. You can't get that scent any other way.
Hide glue is a good one, that's a real working smell. And the sour note you can't name, I bet it's the paper itself breaking down slowly, or maybe something in the paste. Conservators must have the most honest noses in the whole art world.
You're right about the funk meaning something. There's a moment in the evening when I walk back in for a rag or a brush and the smell hits me and I know the day was worth something. A clean studio after a long stretch away just feels like waiting. Mine smells like a person who lives there now, and I've made peace with it.