Writ on Water by Patrick Hughes

Patrick Hughes
b. 1939 | British

Writ on Water

Oil on panel
Signed, titled, and dated “Writ on Water / Patrick Hughes / 2025” (en verso)

In Writ on Water, Patrick Hughes transforms the Venetian cityscape into a dazzling exercise in perception and paradox. Part painting, part sculpture and wholly mind-boggling, the work exemplifies the artist’s signature reverspective technique, in which three-dimensional structures painted in perfect linear perspective appear to shift and move as the viewer walks past. The façades of Venetian palazzi tilt toward the viewer, their reflections rippling across the canal’s mirrored surface, while the distant dome of a church anchors the composition.

The title Writ on Water draws its meaning from the Old English idiom—most famously inscribed on the gravestone of the Romantic poet John Keats—signifying the transience of human endeavor. In the context of Venice, a city perpetually defined by its relationship to the sea, the phrase acquires poetic resonance: the entire urban fabric seems literally “written on water,” its beauty ever endangered by time and tide. Hughes captures that fragility through an optical structure that, though physically solid, seems to dissolve and reform with every movement of the observer.

Constructed from meticulously joined trapezoidal and triangular wooden panels, the composition projects forward from the wall while simultaneously receding into the painted space. The artist digitally maps his imagery to match the skewed planes, then translates each surface into oil paint with flawless precision. Light, color, and shadow are orchestrated so that what should advance appears to retreat—an ingenious inversion that deceives the mind into seeing motion within stillness.

Hughes created his first reverse perspective work in 1964 with a life-sized room for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London entitled Sticking-Out Room, thus beginning his long fascination with perspective illusions. He has since then authored several books on themes related to his art, including visual paradoxes and oxymorons, and he holds a doctorate in science from King’s College in London for his work in the psychology of perception. Today, his work resides in the permanent collection of the British Library and the British Academy in London.

Dated 2025

Panel: 25 1/2" high x 60 1/2" wide (64.77 x 155.67 cm)
Frame: 32 3/4" high x 77 1/2" wide x 11 1/2" deep (83.19 x 196.85 x 29.21 cm)