ROBIN HAWES

Robin J Hawes is an artist and designer. Having worked successfully as a graphic designer and art director in London throughout the 1990s. Robin went on to establish a new career in academia from 2002. He gained his MA in Contemporary Visual Arts at Falmouth University in 2005, and later went on to complete his PHD in Neuroaesthetics (Art & Visual Perception) at CSAD, Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2014. Robin has been a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) since 2015. His on-going art practice is inspired by his investigations into how the human brain interprets ambiguous visual information, and aims to explore how certain structures and aesthetic forms can draw on the elements of imagination and anticipation that are integral to each viewer's unique visual experience. Robin's 'Parallax' series of paintings aim to explore the viewer's visual interpretation of 'perceived' two-dimensional surfaces and the ways in which these initial perceptions can be altered in relation to the viewer's movement and proximity to the work. The paintings subtle three-dimensional structures cause a 'parallax' effect, whereby the spatial relationship between the painted lines appears to change as the visual brain struggles to place the lines on a two-dimensional plane. In this way viewers are able to witness their own perceptual processes in action. The titles of the paintings, which are hidden within each work, are taken from excerpts from classic literature that play with ideas of change or illusion such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis or Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass.