Patrick Hughes has been an innovator since the early days of his career as a professional artist. Educated at the James Graham Day College in Leeds, where he enrolled in 1959, he went on to teach at the Leeds College of Art.

Hughes work is primarily recognizable for its use of “reverspective,” a complex optical illusion rendered on a three-dimensional surface which not only appears flat when viewed from the front, but which also places the most distant pictorial images on the portion of the three-dimensional construct which is nearest the viewer. The often-disorienting, counter-intuitive nature of the work can perhaps be partially attributed to the influence of Surrealist artists such as René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico, whose work Hughes is known to have admired.

Hughes first became interested in exploring the illusions of perspective during the early 1960s, a theme that has characterized his work ever since. His first true “reverspecitve” work was Sticking Out Room (1964), which was displayed at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 1970. So sophisticated is his manipulation of the psychology of visual perception that Hughes’ work has been the subject of several scientific papers.

Also an accomplished author, Hughes has published several books on both visual and linguistic oxymorons.