Patrick Hughes first exhibition was in 1961. Three years later he created his first ‘Reverspective’ - an optical illusion on a 3-dimensional surface where the parts of the picture which seem farthest away are actually physically the nearest. Today he is one of the important and recognisable British artists of his generation, and his work is represented in numerous public collections and important private collections.
“His work is full of irony. By creating a world solidified into perspective he makes pictures that come alive before our eyes. In the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor makes a stone woman, whom Aphrodite brings to life as Galatea. Hughes makes wooden lumps of space and you bring them to life by looking at them. It is sculpted painting, solid space.”
Murray McDonald
Hughes lives and works in London. He has been creating pieces inspired by optics, perspective and illusion for 40 years. Since his first solo exhibition at the Portal Gallery, London, in 1961, Hughes has exhibited extensively in London, as well as throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, America and Canada. Although he has been linked to the British Surrealists and the Pop Artists, he has carved out his own niche.
The artist has written and collated three books on visual and verbal rhetoric, ‘Vicious, Circles and Infinity: An Panoply of Paradoxes’; ‘Upon the Pun: Dual Meaning in Words and Pictures’; and ‘More on Oxymoron’ which investigates both verbal and visual oxymoron. John Slyce’s biography, ‘Patrick Hughes: reverspective’, was published in 2005.
When the principles of perspective are reversed and solidified into sculpted paintings something extraordinary happens; the mind is deceived into believing the impossible, that a static painting can move of its own accord. Patrick Hughes