Creating a Lasting Message Through Artwork

The dimino point: From convergence to divergence

The dimino point refers to the point at which convergence changes to divergence, or vice versa, ie. divergence changes to convergence.

Let me explain this a different way.

While teaching my brothers and sisters and I to draw, our mother often spoke about how to use the vantage point, in order to obtain the proper perspective, on what we were attempting to draw.

Having come from the prairies, where there were miles and miles of flat land, she said that the vantage point could be found, if you looked at a row of telephone poles in the distance. They gradually appear to get smaller and smaller, until they finally, disappear into the horizon.

She would draw two straight lines from the tops of the poles to a designated spot on the distant imaginary horizon. That is the point which she referred to as the vantage point.

I always used to marvel at my mother's perspective in her drawings.

Using a vantage point, everything that she drew, would be put into a proper relationship, in terms of size and placement in the artwork.

I never got adept at using the vantage point to draw, although I did understand what she was showing us.

Regarding this, from my own way of seeing things or my personal perspective, I could see the vantage point, as a place where the converging lines ended, but this seemed to be more in terms of perceiving a blank wall, into which everything disappeared.

I had a startling experience a number of years ago, when I was on the Port Mann Bridge in British Columbia.

Driving over the long, curved bridge from one side to the other, I was suddenly, confronted with that same kind of a blank wall experience, but in a different way. I panicked momentarily when I was halfway across the bridge, as it appeared to me that I had reached the end. 
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This was only a momentary phenomenon, of course, as the bridge extended the rest of the way across the body of water. Thus, I continued safely across it to the other side.

I came to understand at that time, how a transition from convergence to divergence actually had a virtual point of some kind, where something ended and something else started or emerged.

I will refer to this as the dimino point.

As soon as I got past that dimino point, of course, I could see the rest of the bridge.

Why is this important?

The vantage point appears to some extent to display the end of whatever is being portrayed, as two lines converge. What we cannot or do not see, is what diverges from that point. We see the convergence, but not the divergence. Nor are we aware of the exact point of emergence to any great extent.

Perhaps some of the early explorers comprehended that same kind of a phenomenon when they felt that they might fall off the edge of the earth, not realizing that it was actually round.

When they reached what they had previously considered to be the edge, so to speak, they must have been amazed to see that there was no end in sight, at all. It was merely the divergence of another realm hitherto unseen.

In terms of our own life experience, I think that we go through the vantage point, but more as a dimino point, as what is formerly not visible or unseen, becomes visible and can be seen. What is unknown, becomes known. What is unfathomed becomes fathomed. The non-existent becomes existent and it stands the test of time. It is real.

I can ride the wings of timeAnd test the sands of sea;

What I don't comprehend,
The full totality.

The dimino point exposes one to the beyond of the vantage point. It is like two lines converging and then, diverging or vice versa. The dimino point is the point of emergence of the one from the other.

There are many practical applications for this in respect to artwork, but also in terms of other sciences. Somehow, we need to be able to see beyond the vantage point and those who can do so are gifted.

If we cannot see beyond the vantage point, to some extent, we may be forever destined to hit our heads against a blank wall of nothingness or to fall off the ends of the earth, so to speak.

Consider the dimino point as being the point at which convergence emerges into divergence, or vice versa. 

How much further all of our horizons can be extended, when we take all of this into consideration.