I grew up in the Finnish countryside in a family of creative people, my parents painted, my aunts sewed, my cousins played instruments. I had my own room where I spent whole afternoons lost in the making of things, surrounded by the warm dry scent of sharpened pencils, colour pigments laid out on a surface, something half-finished left in the middle because there was always tomorrow. WORKROOM opens with the clean brightness of bergamot and lemon, lavender and warm spice through the middle, and cedarwood and amber at the base, the scent of a room where a mind is quietly at work, unhurried, and entirely at home.
My parents were creative people. My aunts sewed. My uncles and cousins played instruments. Growing up in the Finnish countryside, where nature sets the rhythm of life and the seasons are not suggestions, creativity was simply what happened indoors, quietly, persistently, in the corners of rooms.
I had my own corner. A room that became, without anyone naming it as such, my workroom. I painted in it, drew in it, played the piano badly and then less badly. What I remember most is not what I made but the atmosphere of the making; the particular scent of a freshly sharpened pencil, colour pigments laid out on a canvas, something half-finished left in the middle of the room because the light had changed and there was always tomorrow.
That scent, dry and warm and quietly focused, with something bright underneath it, is a scent I have spent my whole life returning to. It lives in studios and music rooms and the back corners of art schools. It is the scent of a mind at work, unhurried.
WORKROOM opens with the clean brightness of bergamot and lemon — the sharp clarity of a pencil pulled across paper, light coming through a window in the morning. Lavender and warm spice settle through the middle, the comfortable depth of an afternoon spent entirely inside something you love. At the base, cedarwood and amber hold it all in place, warm wood, soft light, the room at the end of the day with everything still exactly where you left it.