“I can see now from the perspective of sixty years making art that in the first half of my career I was interested in showing people the paradox of life, but in the second half, with my Reverspective three - dimensional painting, I let people experience this paradox for themselves.” - Patrick Hughes
Patrick Hughes is a master of witty illusion and paradox. Influenced by Surrealist artists such as René Magritte and Paul Klee, Hughes has come to be internationally recognised for his unique invention, the ‘Reverspective’ – a form of visual trickery which people experience as a disorientation. For as the viewer moves one way, the picture appears to move the other. The illusionary nature of his artwork is not designed to confuse but intended to clarify our relationship with reality. Instead of simply describing the term paradox, Hughes’ creations are means of experiencing it interactively, challenging the way we perceive.
Many of Hughes’s two-dimensional silkscreen prints published with CCA incorporate rainbows; a symbol he views as key to his exploration of visual paradox. “A Rainbow is a fugitive, temporary thing, a rare and passing event, so I made it permanent, trapped it. I continually contradicted it. I saw the irony in the pinning down of this butterfly.”
These rainbows, represented in unusual contexts, exemplify his appreciation for the absurd and the paradoxical; qualities in art which he has always enjoyed. The additional motif of hearts, often linked with the rainbow, has featured in many of the prints made to raise awareness and funds for the British Heart Foundation and other charities.