Royal Robertson

American, 20th century.
Born 1936, St. Helena Parish, Louisiana; died 1997, Baldwin, Louisiana.

Royal Robertson was born on October 21, 1936 in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana. With the exception of a short stint in California, he lived in Louisiana his entire life, mostly in Baldwin. Robertson left school after completing the eighth grade to work as an apprentice to a sign painter, a skill he would exploit to dazzling effect later in life. In 1955, Robertson married Adell Brent, and they had eleven children. The marriage lasted roughly twenty years, but Adell eventually left Royal and moved to Texas. The experience clearly devastated Robertson whose explicative-filled rants became a hallmark of his work.

Aimed at his community, his ex-wife Adell and would-be trespassers, Robertson’s property was completely dominated by confrontational signs that mingled biblical quotations with the “Prophet’s” threats and visions. These signs included warnings that "whores" and "bastards" should stay away and contained misogynistic messages denouncing "bad" women, often addressed to his ex-wife. The house’s interior was decorated with drawings pinned to every available surface. Many drawings inside his home were also of Robertson’s ex-wife, and the interior included a number of shrines dedicated to her. The house and yard were, unfortunately, destroyed by a hurricane in 1993.

Robertson typically worked on poster board, paper, or wood using magic markers, tempera paint, colored pencils, ballpoint pens and glitter. He studied the Bible which he consistently referenced alongside images and texts from pornographic magazines, comic strips, and works of science fiction. He was also preoccupied with numerology and biblical prophecies of the apocalypse. These interests were manifest in images of aliens, spaceships, fire breathing monsters, snakes, architectural drawings of houses and temples, futuristic cities, superheroes, and portraits of Adell often identified with Jezebel and other Amazon-like "harlots.” His colorful drawings are often covered in rambling texts, sometimes in speech balloons, about "adulterous whores" and unfaithful spouses. Some drawings reference precise and painful moments in his life, particularly his wife's unfaithfulness to him. Robertson additionally produced calendars chronicling memories of his marriage with short notations scribbled in each date's block. Much of his work included images that conveyed a sense of the artist, a self-proclaimed Prophet, pitted against the forces of evil.

- Phillip March Jones

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