Patrick was born in Birmingham in 1939, the eldest son of Peter and Florence Hughes, who had met when they worked in Marks and Spencers. During the war he lived in his grandparents’ house in Crewe. Hiding from the German bombs, he and his mother slept in the glory-hole (under the stairs) looking up at the stairs in reverse. Ever since, he has been interested in doing things the other way round. Fed up with the arguing and fighting, he ran away from home at seventeen and never went back.

He trained to be a teacher in Leeds 1959-61 and taught in schools and at Leeds College of Art.

His first and most successful exhibition was in London in 1961. Since then he has shown all over the world and never recaptured that first careless rapture.

He is proud of having compiled the first book on paradoxes, Vicious Circles and Infinity, in 1975 which has since sold 100,000 copies. He has also written More on Oxymoron (1983), about visual and verbal wit. Patrick has the popular touch, his rainbow postcards have sold a million, his multiples fifteen hundred and his screenprints have sold in excess of 10,000.