Robert Hyatt - Artist & Author

Robert Hyatt grew up in Northwest Denver and was formally educated at the University of Colorado, where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and also did graduate studies in fine arts.

Hyatt, artist and author, was adopted. After years of searching for his biological family, Hyatt eventually discovered the identity of his biological parents. To his astonishment he found that his bio-father was the legendary Neal Cassady. Cassady was the social and cultural revolutionary whose writing style was adapted by Jack Kerouac in his famous novel On the Road. Cassady is considered by most historians to be the primary muse for the American Beat Movement of the 1950s.

Like his biological father, Hyatt is a non-conformist (in fact all four of his children share this characteristic – one daughter is helping toddlers suffering from life threatening spinal deformities, while the others are teachers, artists, writers, and musicians).

Hyatt’s countercultural spirit has evolved —from a teen with anti-authority, sometimes self-destructive tendencies, to that of a quiet, intellectually-oriented senior with a stated purpose to create abstract visual art.

Hyatt was always a visual artist, winning awards in high school and college. He had his first “one man show” while still a student at the University of Colorado. During his varied career, Hyatt also worked as a therapist and counselor helping children and adults experiencing the adversity of mental health illness and addiction.

However, producing quality visual art has always been his passion. Over the length of his fine arts career, Hyatt has sold his work through 15 art galleries, has obtained two sculpture commissions and a portrait commission, has appeared in various Colorado publications (including one national arts magazine) highlighting his artistic achievements, and showed his work for two consecutive years in the 1980s at the Denver Art Museum.

Hyatt has enjoyed studying abstract art since his time in university. He has worked in several disciplines and media including painting, drawing, sculpture, serigraphy, and polyresin jewelry.

The “Palettes” series is a revamping of a project that Hyatt was focused on in the 1980s. The high quality photographs are of polyresin castings, each of which was laboriously crafted to create colorful, abstract and expressionistic compositions.

The “Combinatorics” series has been created over the last several years. As the name implies, these compositions are studies of combinations of objects/elements within a finite set. Hyatt’s use of various pens and inks on OSB (Oriented Strand Board) is a unique departure from traditional pen on board works.

Hyatt is currently creating 3-D art via sculpture and installation work titled “Specimens of Abstraction.” These projects combine aspects of past projects into new, complex compositions.

Publications

Hyatt wrote a collection of short stories about growing up in 1950s to 1970s Denver — unaware that his biological father was Beat legend Neal Cassady.

“Beat Bastard: An Adoptee’s Portfolio” is available for purchase at Amazon/Kindle Beat Bastard Book