Meabh McCurtin
I can live in a space inside my mind which is less about facts and more about connecting with people, connecting with ideas, exploring through feelings, the whole synesthesia of smells. I want to feel that I’ve made something that resonates with people and that they like to wear it. It’s a sign that what I’ve done is that I have connected with them.
Meabh is more than a person. She is an elixir. Listening to her, one is in awe of all the greens: the green of her eyes, the green of her homeland, Ireland, the green shades of history, of fairies, of memories. Meabh's words are like summons to worlds shrouded in a beautiful mist, and so are his perfumes.
In the beginning, before it all began, there was no desire to become a perfumer, no vocation, but curiosity. Although Meabh realises now that as a child she was offered a perfumery kit and liked and was impressed by the glasses and pipettes, although she also used to press flowers to see what would happen, Meabh did not know she wanted to be a perfumer until she knew it and she knew it because she gathered, collected, over many years, sensations, words, smells, tastes, stories, elements of deep science that one day found their average perfume.
When Meabh recalls her childhood, she remembers a dreamy, unique childhood, a way of life centred on freedom and exploration: "When I was a child, both my parents were at university. My father was a scientist, a physicist, and my mother was studying English. We spent a lot of time on campus. That environment of my parents being students created an atmosphere of books and learning that really fed my curiosity. Meabh was drawn to the vast field of knowledge and the sensations that a simple life of play by the sea or in a garden can offer: "I grew up in a small town not far from the coast, the west coast of Ireland, and I think the atmosphere of the sea affected me. The sea was in the air and I breathed it to such an extent that it became part of me. Also the beautiful light, a kind of half-light, very atmospheric. When you're by the sea, it's very difficult to put a word to it, but it's like a mixture of the story and the landscape, as if the landscape had absorbed it. My father also worked as a meteorologist and brought home huge maps. I spent my childhood breathing the landscape, drawing, thinking and playing music. I played fiddle and piano in an Irish music band, and we travelled around the country playing in the various competitions and festivals that were going on. It was a lot of fun and a good source of creativity. Learning, exploring, jumping from one thought or feeling to another, recording impressions, that's Meabh and that's how he talks and creates.
