Patrick Hartigan is a painter whose studio practice foregrounds formal material experimentation. His haptic and textural work expresses the world rather than responds to it, with both abstract and figurative outcomes. Hartigan’s open and sensitive engagement with each element and his process of ‘cooking’ paintings, permitting slow layering and development, can give the impression that paintings or parts of paintings have taken shape through events outside the artist’s control and that marks are the remnants or memories of events rather than the events themselves. The current series of paintings are architecturally scaled and were painted unstretched on the ground under the open sky on the rooftop of the artist's Sydney studio. Through collaged elements they extend their interest in shape, colour, texture and sculpture. Value is attributed to every mark, cut, selvedge, and both the fronts and backs of things.