A native of Louisiana, Royal Robertson worked as a sign painter and farm laborer. At the age of fourteen, he claimed to have had a vision of a spaceship with God as its pilot.

The breakup with his wife, with whom he had shared more than twenty years of his life, devastated him and exacerbated his schizophrenia.

His wife and this separation are central to his work. Proclaiming himself a "Prophet," Royal Robertson isolates himself in a denunciatory monologue, imbued with mysticism and apocalyptic predictions.

Robertson's universe is populated by hallucinatory visions and space voyages where extraterrestrials predict the end of times using complex numerological formulas that warn of the dangers of adultery and fornication.

Robertson believes he is the victim of a global female conspiracy, that his ex-wife's betrayal is the cause of humanity's cataclysmic destruction.

He is obsessed with numerology and the biblical prophecies of the end times from the Book of Revelation. He creates calendars depicting memories of his marriage, often double-sided, in his artwork.