Tinted Flower is a tale in two parts: a collection of field notes and an album of painted observations, gathered and brought together by a traveller on journeys to a unnamed, distant place. The two sections deliver, each in their own way a truthful account of what the person saw and learned. This was not a search for adventure, but for understanding: a quest to break the hold the population at this location has had on his or her adult life and to remove the unwanted feelings they have inflicted. It has been a tight grip, a crush of sorts that happened with little deliberate seduction. The traveller’s descriptions are given in a sober and accurate manner, even if neither words nor images can quite give justice to the reality they aspire to reveal. This the readers will easily grasp when they try to hold the two up against each other. What they do provide is first hand details, so lavishly gathered that they still ought to tell you plenty about who these people are and where they live. The book calls itself a project, to avoid the labels and the values that often crop up and attempts to offer some measure of quality, where none has been asked for. It is neither a prose poem nor is it a gallery display arranged on paper, even if that is what the two parts may resemble. That would downplay the importance of the third and final component of this piece: the participation of the readers. They are invited to follow in the footsteps of the narrator and with the help of the material at hand explore this strange place on their own terms. It is a territory that exists without clear boundaries or map coordinates and may at first sight look vaguely familiar, some place the reader could already have been to, but have mislaid in their memory. Only given time and patience may it dawn on them where that is and how it touched them when they least knew it. For this location is where even the simplest tasks can be performed to perfection and if allowed can become moments of real wonder. It may convince some readers that it is a sort of spiritual place, a society free from all the tensions that life can throw at us: a location so amazing that beauty is no longer a distant object, but an elevated state of being, kept back just for the people who live here.
- ISBN13 9780956993328
- Publish Date 2 October 2023
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Paintedwithsound
- Format Paperback
- Pages 36
- Language English