Author: Dick Termes

Why does the Termesphere seem to flip and read like it was a concave surface and the motion reverse? My opinion is this: all illusions work because the mind is used to one thing and the designer or artist pushes the image away from that normality. The illusion happens when the mind pushes it back to what it thinks is normal. With the Termesphere, your mind wants to be on the inside of this image to have it be normal. The normal visual world around us is, to our minds, concave. Our minds will push the sphere image, convex, back from the outside of the sphere to the inside, concave. The realism is important for this illusion to happen because we feel like we are more in a normal world with realism. The abstract or geometrically painted spheres can just be that, paint on a sphere. Why is the faster motion important? That is a little harder for me but I think it has to do with you being able to pull the total image together and not think of it as pieces of pictures. When it is all one scene, we know that it is like the world that is always outside of us and we know that scene is on the concave.

You might think this is a fact when you talk to many artists. Why can’t a painting idea be created in three dimensional space? Why do you have to take six-point perspective back to the flat surface? What if the idea works best in three dimensions?

Just because we would like all things to fit in books doesn’t mean all things have to. You know, we live in a three dimensional world, not the two dimension of the book. I think also many artists wanted to be able to reproduce their ideas for more sales and it is much harder to reproduce in the third dimension. That, maybe could have a lot to do with how they wanted their images to turn out.

When I was at Otis Art Institute in Los Angels I was ask by one of my fellow students, when was I going to “Get serious and get back to the Flat Surface”. I am pretty glad I didn’t get serious.

If math is the study of patterns, my work is very much related. When every line one draws is related to the first line you drew, there is some connection to Math. When the realism you draw grows out of a geometry grid, there is some connection.

When I use the six-point perspective, which is six equal distant points on the sphere, and all lines must always extend to two opposite poles, there is math in this. When every cubical structure I draw must extend to all six equal distant points there is some connection to math. Every cubical line I draw on the sphere is a part of a greater circle.

When the realistic world around you fits into this system of perspective, which all-cubical worlds do, that is mathematics. Many artists find their work fits with other disciplines, my work seems to go over very well with mathematicians.