Royal Robertson

American, 1930-1997

Biography“Prophet” Royal Robertson was born in 1930 in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. He spent his teenage years and twenties working as a sign painter, traveling to the West coast for a short time. He spent most of his life in Baldwin, Louisiana. In 1955 he married his wife Adell and the two had eleven children. After 19 years of marriage, Adell left him and took their children to Texas. Scorned and devastated, Robertson became consumed by a misogynistic rage directed toward his ex-wife and he started to create work that he displayed both inside and outside his home denouncing Adell’s betrayal. Robertson’s obsession became a mental disorder, and he became convinced that he was the victim of an evil female conspiracy. As described by Paul Arnett, “He disavowed the Christian proclivities for redemption, yet Robertson reconfigured many of the techniques and assumptions of evangelical fundamentalism into a mythological jambalaya (heavy on the cayenne) of science fiction, mass media, and advertising images (especially those he associated with technological advance or the future), mixed with epically autobiographical motifs of the broken promise, the grand betrayal, and sure-fire vengeance.”

Robertson had visions throughout his life, which he recorded in his art and writings. He described frequent contact from interdimensional and interplanetary beings that predicted the End of Days and warned him of the dangers of adultery. Many of his works utilize markers, tempera paint, ball point pens and glitter, which he applied to poster board—influenced by his work as a sign painter. He drew references from pop culture sources like comic strips, science fiction, and pinups, as well as biblical prophecies from the Book of Revelations. All of these references comingled in his imagination and appear in his work, some of which also shows visions of UFOs traversing space and beaming up Earth’s inhabitants. Robertson eventually identified as a “Libra Patriarch Prophet Lord Archbishop Apostle Visionary Mystic Psychic Saint Royal Robertson.” Indeed, some of these identifying words appear on this work, In Jurney to a Farway Land World—River, Mountain's Old Apostle.

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