Simon Vince

Time Painting (2003)

A Visual Interpretation To Yoko Ono’s ‘Time Painting’ (1962)

’’The idea for this project was to produce an audio/visual interpretation to one of Yoko Ono’s instruction pieces, originally taken from her book ‘Grapefruit’. The piece I chose was ‘Time Painting’.

‘ Make a painting in which the colour comes out only under a certain light at a certain time of the day. Make it a very short time.’ Yoko Ono ‘Time Painting’ (1962)

This visual interpretation is not only inspired by the poem itself but is also an exploration into Yoko Ono’s Japanese background and its influence in her work. Research for this came from looking at haiku poetry and Zen Buddhism, working around the concept of ‘beauty from the most simple’. ‘Time Painting’ focus’s on the growth, life and death of a single leaf on a tree, to its one off journey that it takes down to the ground joining all the other leaves to create a beautiful and natural painting, only to rot away with time.

This 2-minute animation incorporates live DV footage with still animated photography and drawn animation. I composed the simplistic soundtrack, which provides and adds to the overall motion and feeling of the piece.’’