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Early Career
Patrick Hickey was a talented painter and architect. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, he began to gain a reputation as an artist and exhibited his artwork at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. This is where his pieces of the Wicklow landscape were first exhibited in 1955. Although he was a well known painter, he was best known for his work as a printmaker as he was very skilled in etching and lithography.

One of Hickey's largest projects was founding the Graphic Studio in Dublin in 1960. The lack of art education in Ireland was the problem that Hickey sought to resolve when he co-founded the Graphic Studio, along with fellow founders Anne Yeats, Elizabeth Rivers, Leslie MacWeeney and Liam Miller. The studio was situated at 18 Upper Mount St., Dublin. Although it was small, the studio was a large contributor to the unfolding and development of modern graphic art at the time in Ireland, for which Hickey has been credited. Hickey remained a prominent figure in the Graphic Studio up to 1970. His role was then taken over by Mary Farl Powers, a print artist from the U.S.A. It was during this time as an ordinary member that Hickey created some of what is known as, his best work. During the 1960s, some of Hickey’s most pronounced prints included the ‘Stations of the Cross’ (1965) and a collection of eighteen inferno etchings that illustrate Dante’s ‘Divine comedy’ (1965). An Italian government competition held in honour of Dante's 700th birthday, awarded Hickey with a second place prize for his collection of ‘Divine comedy’ etchings.

In 1967 Hickey received a scholarship from the Norwegian government, he spent his time in Norway painting watercolours. In this same year he designed a collection of postage stamps, for the use of the Irish government.