Leaving the Brockmoor House when Rob was 6 months old, the whole family (seven in all) squeezed into a two bedroom terraced house in Lawnswood Road, Wordsley until Rob was 5 years old when his parents managed to get the brand new two bed-roomed council house at 50, Ryder Street, Wordsley, where he spent his formative years.  These were adventurous times for Rob and his friends, exploring and playing in the vicinity, Tack Wood, The Osier Beds, Bells Mill, or cycling along the canal towpaths past Glassworks, Foundries, Clay-mines, Brick kilns, Steelworks, scrap-yards, derelict industrial buildings and the local countryside, Kinver Edge, Gothersley and Highgate Common   These experiences engendered an enduring love of the Black Country and a spirit of adventure, exploration and travel which has never left him.

His interests are extremely wide and somehow always make their way directly or indirectly into his art. His inherited Black Country mechanical and practical skills have enabled him to convert a Renault Trafic van into a comprehensively equipped “Mobile Studio” (in which he has done over 300,000 miles) and maintain his 1977 DUCATI 900 and the 1930 500cc Scott Flying Squirrel which he bought when he was sixteen years old and has been riding continuously ever since (59 years!) and on which he is still regularly seen riding in the area.

Following on from this he has been spending some years painting panoramic views, day and night, of the Black Country from Turner’s Hill and Darby’s Hill, Dudley, three examples of which are on permanent display on the ground floor of Russells Hall Hospital.

Rob’s commitment as a Peace Campaigner has lead him to spend many years working in the battlefields of the two World Wars, particularly those of the First World War where he has been made an Honorary Citizen of the town of Albert, the epicentre of the Battle of The Somme in 1916 (the battle in which three of his Great Uncles were killed)