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. His work is strongly oriented toward drawing the human figure and incorporates broad interest in history and mythology.