He is known for founding Cyrene School near Bulawayo, and for introducing the Arts and Crafts style to Africans in both South Africa and Rhodesia.
He returned to South Africa, joined the Transvaal diocese of the Anglican church in 1924, and completed his religious training in 1928 when he was ordained as a deacon.
This form of carving soon became the school's trademark style, and was continued by a nun called Sister Pauline after Paterson's departure.
[2] Before long, the school developed what would become Africa's first art workshop, with students and attached professional carvers producing religious carvings on commission for churches needing furniture and ecclesiastical objects.
"Our aim is to turn out the self-contained burger type, able to farm rationally and to care for his cattle, able to build his own home and to make its furniture and even to enrich them by carving and design.
He also established an arts workshop that met in the afternoons, which typically included disabled students unable to take part in sports or construction.
Cyrene became well known as Paterson sought to exhibit his artists and sell their work in order to recoup the heavy costs of providing art education.
In the wake of the ensuing publicity from the royal visit, traveling exhibitions of Cyrene student art toured South Africa, England, and the United States regularly from 1949-1953, raising enough money for Paterson to cover his annual budget deficits.
Beyond any doubt, McEwen, whose writings and exhibitions set the tone for the burgeoning international reception of Zimbabwean art, silenced any discussion of Paterson's influence.
[8] Morton, meanwhile, has maintained that Paterson's students typically copied his own limited style, and were never able to get the training they needed to progress technically.