Philip Hughes, Born 1936
software entrepreneur & artist
Philip Hughes, the son of a cable company sales engineer and a nurse, won a mathematics scholarship to Clare College Cambridge, where he read mechanical sciences and economics. After university he joined Shell as a sales technician. Recognising that the future lay with computers, he joined the software company CEIR UK, which later became Scicon. After eight years he left Scicon with colleague Len Taylor to set up the Logica software company. It became one of the largest of its kind in the UK, growing to 40,000 staff. He left Logica in 1991 to develop a successful second career as a professional artist. Hughes's eye is drawn to landscapes with a trace of human settlement. Stonehenge is a particular favourite, as is the prehistoric chalk mound at Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. The Andean region of South America, with its Mayan and Incan remains, is another regular venue. In 2002 Hughes spent two months in the Antarctic as artist-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, travelling towards the South Pole and camping on the high plateaus. He is married to the writer, translator and ceramacist Psiche Hughes.
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