Patrick Hughes

Patrick Hughes (born Birmingham, 1939) is a British artist known for the 'reverspective', an optical illusion in which the parts of the image that seem most distant are in fact physically closest to the viewer. His work sits within painting and the art of perception, and his technique is of interest to artists and to the study of visual psychology. He lives and works in London.

After schooling in Kingston upon Hull and study in Leeds, he taught at the Leeds College of Art before devoting himself fully to independent work. In the 1970s he explored perception through the rainbow motif in prints and paintings such as Pile of Rainbows (1973) and Leaning on a Landscape (1979). His own technique uses reliefs of several truncated pyramids over which a reversed perspective is painted, so that the viewer's movement heightens the sense of depth. His subjects, including abandoned buildings, bookshelves and arcades, recall the Surrealism of Magritte, Ernst and Dalí.

His works have been installed in public spaces such as the British Library in London and the German National Library in Frankfurt. Besides painting, he has written books on paradox and wordplay, such as Paradoxymoron (2011), and has contributed to newspapers including The Observer and The Guardian. His legacy lies in turning optical illusion into a personal artistic language that remains a reference point in the study of perception.