Imprimatura

(based on the IFComp 2024 version)


An artist’s spirit is present in their work, be it a sparkling glow or a faint after-image. When offered the chance to gather seven paintings to remember your loved one by, you must choose thoughtfully, tenderly, attentive of those moods and feelings you want to keep closest to your heart.

Thoughtful and tender is also how I would characterise the delicate writing in this piece. This being a text-game, each painting is a carefully crafted paragraph evoking colours and shapes, images and sensations, helped along by suggestive sounds and contemplative background music.

The memories associated with your chosen paintings, just as empathically written, come together in a somewhat coherent but necessarily fragmented picture of the beloved artist’s personality and history.

Both paintings and memories are gathered in two separate windows where you can revisit them together to more easily discern the common themes or the hooked barbs that stand out.

Despite being emotionally drawn to this piece, there were a few aspects that grated and disrupted the smoothness of my engagement.
-The order in which the paintings are presented to you is randomised to such an extent that it happened multiple times that I saw the same one twice in a row, which significantly diminished the impact of the described images.
-The memories attached to the paintings are sometimes proffered as the direct inspiration for that specific work. I don’t claim to understand how a painter’s inspiration works, but the link between a specific memory of an event and the painting that supposedly flowed from that event felt strained to me at times.

In the concluding sequence, you are given the chance to finish a work that your loved one lightly sketched on the canvas. This is done by adjusting several features of a actual visual image of a painting. I was excited by this opportunity to try my hand at giving creative input and steering the artwork with the impression of my chosen loved one’s spirit still fresh in my mind as guidance.

However, the flat and bland computer-rendering of what should be a heartfelt handcrafted painting made me wish deeply that the author of Imprimatura had opted to just describe this final painting in the same sensitive and eloquent manner as the previous works of art in the game. The words of the writer struck much more closely to my heart, elicited much more honestly felt emotions in me, than the dull and texture-less picture my choices produced on the computer screen.

What should have been a cathartic and freeing experience of closure turned out to be an emotionally drained excercise in Paint™-for-beginners.

Very impressive, deeply felt, visually evocative and imaginative writing. Seriously flawed and disillusioning in the design and execution of its conclusion.