About the Perfumer
My name is Emily.
I am a life-long artist - whether I have wanted to be or not.
I grew up on an orchard in the 80s, in a rural town in New Zealand’s far north. I’m the eldest of 4 girls.
As a child I was obsessed with drawing, painting, and riding horses.
I always knew I was going to be an artist. I’m not sure if I was taught to feel that, or if it came from within. Either way, as a child there was never a doubt in my mind as to the path I would take in life.
In the mid-90s I left high school a year early to attend art school. I hated it.
I was full of rebellion and teenage angst. I wanted to learn how to make a 6 foot broze statue stand up on it’s own. I wanted to make my own oil paints from scratch. I wanted to learn techniques and practical skills.
Instead, they taught us how to think. My 17 year old self rejected the opportunity for self-exploration, expression and communication. I shut down, refused to ‘play the game’, and generally made myself miserable for four years.
In spite of that, in spite of myself, I learned how to think like an artist.
After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts I spent my 20s circling the edges of the art world, resisting it’s pull with all the residual stubborness of my teenaged self.
I worked as a projectionist in an art house theatre. Then as a picture framer. Then as a gilder, decorative muralist and paint-finish artist.
I became obsessed with gung fu - martial arts and the physical expression of technique and self-discipline became the centre of my life outside of my work, and in my mid-20s I gained a black belt in Shaolin chuan fa.
Then I ran away.
I travelled. I reconnected with the natural world in some of the most beautiful, remote parts of the planet.
I returned home and built a very different life. I moved to Golden Bay, at the top of the South Island. I fell in love, I became a mother, then later, a solo parent. I kept chickens and grew vegetables. I trained as a herbalist and fell in love with making potions.
Clinical work didn’t fulfill me - I needed to be making, creating. My skincare range Pantheon Apothecary carried me through the early years of my son’s life, offering enough creative outlet to keep me inspired.
Cosmetic chemistry was my doorway to perfumery - the perfect marriage of art and science, and I dove in head-first.
My son and I made the move back to the far north, to my home town, the same year Element Aroma Lab was born. I’d been exploring the art of scent for some time by then, working within the confines of my natural skincare brand. I was chafing at the boundaries that imposed and wanted to branch out into the world of synthetics and all the artistic freedom and scope that modern science offers. While settling back in to the far north, I immersed myself in creating my first small collection of fragrances.
A year later I opened Pantheon Apothecary in the heart of Kerikeri village, showcasing both Pantheon Skin and the infant Element Experimental Aroma Lab. In the subsequent years my perfume collection evolved and developed, with my earliest fragrances now relegated to room perfume and candles.
Now, with 2 Bachelor’s degrees, professional certification, and 22 industry awards under my belt, I feel like I have proven myself professionally, and it’s time to come full circle in my life, embrace art for art’s sake, and stretch my wings into more conceptual olfactive space, and see where I end up.
The Inspiration
As with all art, inspiration can strike at any time, and can be fed by a variety of sources… lived experience, memory, place, emotion, even an abstract concept.
The trick is to distill that inspiration into the olfactive space. How do you communicate a moment in time? Or the essence of a person as you know them? Or something as intangible as a feeling?
The Lab
Tucked in the back of the beautiful Pantheon Apothecary boutique, the aroma lab is in constant motion.
Organised chaos, with hundreds of aroma ingredients from around the world, coming together in a cacophany of scent.
The Aroma Bar
Open to the public, Element Aroma bar allows you to step into the world of the Perfumer and create your own unique perfume using our specialised eau de parfum accords.
If you’re in the Bay of Islands, get in touch and book a time to come play.
