Born in Dundee, the son of Andrew Patrick, an architect and amateur artist who encouraged his son to draw and paint, he studied painting at Glasgow School of Art from 1924 to 1928, studying with Maurice Greiffenhagen, and in Paris. He continued his interest in etching which was very popular in the 1920s and was to prove a source of income for him during the Depression years. A foremost landscape painter, he began his career producing highly finished etchings, but when the market for these collapsed in the 1930s he turned towards painting in watercolour and oil.

He produced portraits and still life works but is known mainly for his paintings of cultivated landscapes in the Scottish countryside. They are often very wide in scope yet meticulously detailed. In this he has been compared to Bruegel. His style was traditional but his use of colour could be bold, as were some compositional aspects of several of his paintings.

He received many awards including the Guthrie Prize and was elected a full member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1957.