Congrats to the winners!
Now that the judges can't be influenced anymore, I can say how much I was impressed and moved by Lonthav's work.
Even before trying it for the first time, I was intrigued by this note in the zip file:
Instead of trying to be realistic I'm trying to paint an abstract emotion in the viewer's mind. This is what almost all great art attempts to achieve. This is why you can get the same powerful inclination (if not a much more powerful one) from abstract paintings as you can from something photo-like (don't know about you but this holds true for me).
I realized I was hungry for such an Age, that this was a yet unexplored universe for Writers.
And Tre'bivdil gently brings forth that universe. It is timid at first, almost apologetic in its welcome note at the linking point. And then you start noticing the building blocks, the bold splashes of colour among the pastel hues, the infinite blue sky, the calm ocean. Few ingredients, a minimalist palette.
You feel there is a lot to explore, and yet you take time to sit and take in the view, listen to the murmur of the sea. The sun feels good and the light would make any painter happy. There are distant islands, inhabited, you decide, by sea-going natives who revere this place as sacred.
Then you get up and discover the Age. It is a Dali masterpiece lost on a distant planet. Each sandstone island a small world in itself, a Zen garden you could sit in for days, just savoring its distinct taste, before crossing the bridge towards the next, a symbolic gesture, a rite of passage. The bridges themselves, in sharp contrast with the pure geometry of the stone, ancient, creaking, yet lovingly maintained for millenia.
There is a sense of perfection, of completeness. Nowhere do you think "I would have done this or this differently". You know you wouldn't have done it at all, and you feel sorry for it.
Lon, thank you for this masterpiece. It has a permanent place in my bookshelf.
Thanks Grogyan, GregW11, PhilippH, Nynaveve, Hoikas, mar, Kato, Chogon and the people I forgot to put here.
sigh. And you wonder why I'll not enter another RAD.........
