Robert Beatty was born in 1981 on a cattle and tobacco farm in rural Kentucky near Nicholasville—"one of the most beautiful places in the world," according to Beatty. Growing up, he "constantly" drew, teaching himself. He began to experiment with his family camcorder, exploring circuit bending and video feedback, and during high school later started investigating and playing music and designing concert posters. Beatty never attended art school, instead moving to Lexington after high school. He also worked for a time at radio station WRFL, and supported himself for years working at a gas station and as a janitor.
Artwork
Beatty's graphic design work employs a distinctive style which has been called "trippy," "nostalgic," "psychedelic," "dark," and "mystifying;" Beatty tries to evoke a "weird sense of wonder." He began working by hand and today mostly uses Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to perform his "digital airbrushing," replicating and subverting traditional graphic design techniques using software. However, Beatty says that his work often "goes back to drawing, because that's the simplest thing." A prolific artist, Beatty has designed over 75 album covers; after he decided to pursue creating art for other bands instead of just his own, his album artwork rose in popularity with his covers for Challenger by Burning Star Core in 2008 and Tame Impala's Currents in 2015. In addition to album art, Beatty's illustration and design work has grown to include concert flyers, magazines, book covers, fashion design, music videos, and news feature illustrations, with clients including Wired and the New York Times. He has also released an artists' book, Floodgate Companion, which Beatty "structured... more like an experimental film than a book." Beatty also designed the artwork for the soundtrack to the video game Thumper. His video work has been featured at the Anthology Film Archives. In 2019, Beatty created a lyric video for Cage the Elephant's song "House of Glass", from the albumSocial Cues. In 2018 he contributed "surreal" art for use in fashion house Dries Van Noten's fall-winter 2018 collection. Beatty designed the cover art for historian and photographer Roger Steffens's anthology photobookThe Family Acid: California. His influences include Cal Schenkel, Piotr Kamler, Gary Panter, Terry Gilliam, and Lillian Schwartz.
Music
Beatty performs electronic and noise music solo under his own name and under the names Three-Legged Race and Ed Sunspot, co-founded Hair Police in 2001, and is or has been a member of experimental and electronic bands Warmer Milks, Burning Star Core, Eyes and Arms of Smoke, and Lexington collective Resonant Hole. He was also a member of Ulysses alongside Apples in Stereo members Robert Schneider and John Ferguson. In 2014 he released the album Soundtracks for Takeshi Murata under his own name. Beatty also masters music, including Public Housing's 2014 self-titled album.
