Patrick Heron was born in Headingley, Leeds, Yorkshire. In 1933, following a visit to the National Gallery in London, he began to paint under the influence of Paul Cézanne. From 1937 to 1939 he was a part-time student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He later worked as an assistant at Bernard Leach’s Pottery in St. Ives, and as art critic for the New English Weekly.

He had his first one-man exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London, in 1947. His early work was largely figurative, with a colour sense influenced by Georges Braque and Henri Matisse.

After seeing an exhibition of American Abstract Expressionism at the Tate Gallery in 1956, Heron turned to abstraction, developing a style distinguished by the intense interaction of colour. His work was devoted to the analysis of natural forms, and the use of colour to express the pleasure human sense of sight.

In addition to painting Heron undertook tapestry design, and designed a stained glass window for the Tate Gallery in St. Ives. He had major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1968), Whitechapel Art Gallery (1972), Bonython Art Gallery, Sydney (1973), Barbican Art Galley, London (1985), Art Gallery of New South Wales (1990), Tate Britain (1998) and Tate St Ives (2018). His work is the collection of the Arts Council of Great Britain, British Council, British Museum, Manchester City Art Gallery, Tate Gallery and Victoria & Albert Museum, and some 17 collections in North America including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.