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“Hiatt’s work is strongly oriented toward drawing the human figure and incorporates broad interest in history and mythology. His paintings of Pan, of Dancing Satyrs, of Chirion and Perseus are elegant, romantic and accessible all at once.” – Ron Cassie News-Post Staff, Frederick News Post, January 31, 2008

Artist Statement

Mine is the world of the imagination. From the simple innocence of American everyday life to the mythological Greek nude, I explore what it means to be human. My imagery is idealistic, romantic and often nostalgic where existence is defined as much by delusion as reality.

With my formal art education focused primarily on the classics I continue to explore the world drawing and painting in traditional mediums and style. I paint what interests me and the old stories, myths and legends interest me. Therefore, I explore the human figure while relying often on mythology and history for inspiration. The work speaks for itself.

Motivation

Why do I draw and paint? I have no choice. Its more than a compulsion, it’s an addiction that comes with both the euphoria of success and the depression of failure. For me this emotional roller coaster is a way of life deeply entwined within the artistic process that is unpredictable while at the same time irresistible.

The gift of creativity is both a blessing and a curse. There is praise and rejection; recognition and indifference.  There is self-discovery and self-denial. There is affirmation and doubt. Everything internal and external is in opposition. My work or rather my play is a reflection of me. I have no direction and I ascribe to no particular school or style as I wander the wilderness of my own imagination. Yet while I am there I find the most remarkable things. My medium is the process and the imagery is usually fantasy. Anything that I create is significant only in that it exists at all. Above all else I have come to accept nothing seriously, especially myself.

I do not desire to paint pretty pictures or pictures that most people would hang on their walls at home. Instead I prefer to paint pictures that are interesting to look at and not easily forgotten. Sometimes I paint disturbing images that challenge the orthodox, the status quo and convention because for me there are no questions that cannot be asked or no subjects that cannot be approached providing that they are sufficiently tempered by art to make them palatable. Art is the mirror to safely view the intolerable and the incomprehensible. Medusa’s reality is a bitter pill and without the polished shield of art we would all turn to stone.

Growing up and working in the Midwest I learned to enjoy the outdoors, the land and the people that make up a somewhat overly idealistic rural and often irrational society. I also learned very early in life that orthodoxy stifles creativity; therefore, being creative, I had no choice but to learn how to reject those orthodoxies while at the same time not becoming self-destructive. I had to learn how to question everything and discard anything that has no practical value to me. I found sound footing in reason, enlightenment and science. I found solace in accepting constant change and living with frustration.

Discarding convention and exploring new ideas and finding new ways to visualize the world has always been heresy. Artists are heretics and it did not take me long to find out that the world is not safe for a heretic. I took refuge in solitude. Still I cannot turn my back on 5000 years of Western Culture. I see it all around me. I see artistic inspiration in the democracy of Athens and the great republics of Rome that continue to live on in our nation’s soul. I see the waxing and waning of freedom with each new rebirth that comes alive in the arts. I see Michelangelo’s Florence, the European Reformation of Rubens and the revolutionary Spain of Picasso.

For me, my only freedom is drawing and painting. It’s my world where I can explore ideas by drawing lines around them and let images emerge on their own that are unique even if I am deliberately trying to copy someone else. Every creative hand has its own unique voice. When I draw and paint I have a voice, a small voice, like a child scratching lines in the wet sand on the ocean shore.

Most of all its fun.

Feeling that I grew up too soon and missed something important in my childhood, I have started all over again.

Biography

Patrick Hiatt was born in 1942 and showed exceptional artistic skills at a very early age; however, being raised in the Midwestern United States in a pragmatic Pentecostal family who viewed painting and drawing as creating graven images, his interest in art was strongly discouraged. Still he persisted and at the age of 14 attended classes at The Joslyn Art Center in Omaha, Nebraska. Later he attended The University of Wisconsin at Madison majoring in Art Education. There he was fortunate to study life drawing under John Schrup. He also briefly studied drawing and figure painting in oil at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Illinois.

He regularly exhibited at the Straub galleries in Madison, Wisconsin and also presented several one man shows. One of his paintings, “
Rising City”, was accepted and secured a purchase award in the 1963 Wisconsin Salon; at that time he was the only undergraduate student ever to exhibit in the salon.

In 1964 his art education was interrupted by the military draft. During service in the Army he received an education in electronics, while still painting and exhibiting both in the military environment and commercially in private galleries. Later he struggled to balance his art with engineering, technical illustration and production graphics, first as an engineering technician for NASA on the Apollo Project, then illustrating for Sanyo and General Dynamics. He eventually entered a successful career in digital electronics working on the F-16 fighter aircraft, Y2K readiness for the FAA and computer deployment for the Department of Homeland Security. During these years he still managed to draw, paint and exhibit whenever possible. He also taught and conducted workshops in drawing and painting. Now retired from the corporate and government world, he is devoting his full time efforts to a successful career in painting and drawing.