Patrick Hughes

Biography

b. 1939, Birmingham, Britain

Patrick Hughes is a British artist known for the creation of reverspective, which is an optical illusion of a three-dimensional surface in which the various parts of the image appear farthest away when they are physically at the nearest point. This is possible by painting a view in reverse. Prior to becoming an artist in his own right, Hughes graduated from Graham Day College and began teaching at Leeds College of Art. Many of his early works were very playful in their nature, frequently positioning objects back to front. He developed an interest in exploring oxymorons and paradoxes in his work and began experimenting with the perception of perspective and illusion in the early 1960s. By the 70’s he presented his investigations of illusion and perspective in a series of prints and paintings involving a rainbow motif.