Patrick held his first solo show in 1961 at the Portal Gallery, London. A few years later, Hughes made two seminal reverse perspective works, Infinity and Sticking-out Room. In the 1970s Hughes’ name became synonymous with rainbow paintings, which also became very popular as prints and as postcards; people enjoyed them as decoration, but for Hughes the rainbow represented a solid experience.

In the late 1980s Hughes revisited exploiting the difference between perspective and reverspective and solidifying space. For the last 25 years his 3-D reverspective paintings have been hughesually in demand, exhibited around the world and featured in many public collections. The experience of seeing a Patrick Hughes sculptured painting in reality is really to experience unreality and the paradox of illusory space and movement.

Reverspectives are three-dimensional paintings that when viewed from the front initially give the impression of viewing a painted flat surface that shows a perspective view. However, as soon as the viewer moves their head even slightly, the three dimensional surface that supports the perspective view accentuates the depth of the image and accelerates the shifting perspective far more than the brain normally allows. This provides a powerful and often disorienting impression of depth and movement. The illusion is made possible by painting the view in reverse to the relief of the surface, that is, the bits that stick farthest out from the painting are painted with the most distant part of the scene. Learn More