Robert Beatty

Robert Beatty ( ; born 1981) is an American artist and musician based in Lexington, Kentucky, best known for his noise band Hair Police, his solo project Three Legged Race, and most recently for his work designing album covers, including Tame Impala's Currents (2015), Kesha's Rainbow (2017), and limited-edition artwork for The Weeknd's Dawn FM (2022). Early life 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 and taking inspiration from MTV's series Liquid Television, Terry Gilliam's animated work, and Mad. He began to experiment with his family camcorder, exploring circuit bending and video feedback, and during high school later started investigating and playing music with a friend (Beatty was fond of music from Warp Records) and designing concert posters. Beatty never attended art school (or college at all), 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 an old version of Photoshop running on a ten-year-old computer 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.