The five short works that comprise "Time Paintings I-V", produced in 2003 and 2004, represent my first attempts to alter the way I ordinarily go about shooting video. Rather than using a camera to document a "scene", I decided to instead limit my visual images to shots that include a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal edge. And as with the three later projects in this series ("Cicada Songs", "Mexico Painting", and "Barcelona Mosaics"), the sound that is recorded at the time the video is shot becomes raw material for the kind of musically-structured compositions I'm trying to create. There's no overdubbing of sound, rather, all ambient sound recorded at the time of shooting takes on the form of a rhythmic beat when subjected to the kind of rapid editing and layering I employ. The result is more of a sonic pattern, a conglomeration of sounds where the whole is definitely more significant than the parts. 
Visually, I'm interested in creating brushstrokes – in simplifying and codifying each shot made with the camera down to an elemental gesture. Though repetitive in nature, however, each vertically, horizontally, or diagonally-constructed image contains much variation in texture, color, and other details derived from the way the camera was used to record each shot. There is some reference, of course, to the particulars of the locations serving as subject – certain moods and impressions that can be communicated through such fragments of sound, line, texture, and color - even though a description of a location’s identity has been for the most part disguised because of the restrictive mode of shooting I'm using.

©2012 Vin Grabill