Leaning on a Landscape
1978
Hughes, Patrick
'Leaning on a Landscape' is one of a series of works made in the 1970s, when Hughes was preoccupied with the motif of the rainbow. In this painting, the artist uses flat colours to manipulate the viewers' understanding of perspective, creating an impossible, distorted illusion of space.
The works from this series were followed by three-dimensional paintings known as 'reverspectives', in which Hughes focused on creating a disorienting illusion of reversed perspective. As the artist explains: 'The illusion is made possible by painting the view in reverse to the relief of the surface, that is, the bits that stick furthest out from the painting are painted with the most distant part of the scene.'
Patrick Hughes was born in Birmingham in 1939. He studied at James Graham Teachers' Training College in Leeds (1959-1961) and taught in various schools before becoming a senior lecturer in painting and drawing at Leeds College of Art. He also taught at Chelsea and Wolverhampton Schools of Art, after completing an art education course at London University in 1970. Hughes held his first solo exhibition at the Portal Gallery, London in 1961 and has been exhibiting with Flowers Galleries since 1970. His early paintings, executed in a characteristic flat, graphic manner, were influenced by the works of Paul Klee, Rene Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico.
Monika McConnell