Dick A. Termes
I have spent over 50 years exploring six point perspective on the sphere in order to capture up down and all around environments. The six points are the six vertices of the octahedron drawn on the sphere. I have used very real places for some of my painting and others are surreal worlds and others also explore different geometries on the sphere. My work is on the cover of Steven Hawking's French version of Brief History of Time and my work was shown along with four other with M.C. Escher at the University of Rome on Escher's 100th birthday. My work is an inside out optical illusion of the real world around you showing 360 degrees in all direction.
Two worlds are in the same place at the same time. This is a clear acrylic sphere with images on the inside and the outside. It is painted with acrylics. All of the painting is done on the outside of the sphere. The stairway is painted first on the outside using a six point perspective system. It has to be designed so you can see inside the sphere so, one side of the stairway is left clear. Many coats of gesso are then painted over the stairs so they only show on the inside. Within the patterns given on the outside a new world is painted on top of the gesso. Trees, cliffs and cubical structures are painted on the outside white patterns.Two worlds on the same surface but one is concave and the other is convex.
Cubical Universe is a 16" diameter sphere. It is a polyethylene sphere painted with acrylics paints. This shows how well the six point perspective system works. When I paint these perspective spheres I imagine I am on the inside of the sphere and I look in all directions, north, south, east, west, up and down. In this piece I tried to see how many rooms within room I could see from one point in space turning in a circle. Every line you see in this piece, if extended, would become a greater circle. The six vanishing points are all equal distant or the vertices of the octahedron. Colors are used to help people keep track of the six different planes found in this Termesphere.