What is a Termesphere
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Every person alive is standing at the center of a complete spherical world. Everything you can see, in every direction, up, down, left, right, forward, behind, forms a perfect sphere around you at every moment.
Dick Termes figured out how to paint it.
A Termesphere is a painted sphere that captures a complete environment from a single point in space. The entire surrounding world, in every direction, painted onto the outside of a sphere using a six-point perspective system Dick developed in 1968.
When the sphere rotates slowly on its motor, you see the full environment reveal itself. If you can imagine yourself inside the ball, you begin to realize he has painted a complete world.
Every painting ever made has a box around it.
The edge of the canvas cuts the scene off. The frame ends it. You see what the artist chose to show you, and nothing beyond.
Stand in a landscape and slowly turn in a circle. You see what is in front of you, then what was to your left, then what was behind you, then what was to your right. Keep turning and you come back around to where you started. Look up and the sky is there. Look down and the ground continues under your feet. The scene never stops. There is no edge.
A Termesphere has no edge. The environment wraps all the way around, above and below, behind you as much as in front. What Dick Termes painted is not a view of a place. It is the space itself, the way it would surround you if you were standing inside it.
The First One
The first Termesphere was painted in 1968 on a child’s ball at the University of Wyoming. Dick spread a six-point perspective grid around it, drew a simple room, and understood immediately what he had found.
That sphere still hangs in the gallery. Over 400 have been painted since.
Browse the Collection →
Six Point Perspective
Traditional perspective systems give you one, two, or three vanishing points. Dick developed a system with six — one for every direction the eye can travel. It is the only system that can map a complete surrounding environment onto a single surface.
Explore the perspective system →
The Total Photo and VR
To document his paintings, Dick built a camera mount from a dodecahedron and received US Patent 4,214,821 in 1980. The geometry he invented is the same geometry that powers VR headsets today. The gallery’s VR experience puts you inside his paintings.
See the Total Photo and VR experience →