Growing up on the Cornish coast at Newquay, Robert attended Cornwall Technical College and the Redruth School of Art before studying art at Falmouth, when there were only 65 students in total at the Art College. At that time, all of the tutors and staff were painters and sculptors, and he was greatly influenced by Francis HEWLETT and Robert ORGAN. A goodly range of studies, jobs, travels and marriage followed, with Robert meeting his future wife in Manchester College of Art, where lack of finance curtailed his studies. From there the couple spent months in Israel on a kibbutz, some time in Brighton, followed up by a teaching post at the famous Summerhill School (with A S Neill as head). 

Returning to Cornwall on the birth of their first child, Robert took up fishing and crabbing as an occupation, with painting lurking in the foreground as to how he saw his future. His first solo show in Penzance in 1987 was followed by a solo exhibition at NAG in 1988, and Robert Jones, the painter, was well launched. His work has also been shown at the Rainyday Gallery, Penzance. In 1995 a series of his paintings was included in the Tate St Ives exhibition 'Porthmeor Beach, A Century of Images'. Jones is a regular exhibitor at Tregony Gallery on the Roseland peninsula.

Latterly his part-time teaching commitments continued at both Penzance School of Art and Falmouth College of Art to sustain a living, but increasingly he was able to achieve the favourable position of full-time painting and writing. See FIRST LIGHT GALLERY website for Cornish artists and books published by Jones. He is both a writer and a visual artist, and excels at both.

Tom CROSS, in his excellent magazine review of contemporary artists in Cornwall, Catching the Wave, comments 'RJ belongs to a long line of sea painters working in Cornwall, a tradition that goes back to the mid-nineteenth century.... he has made the sea his subject.'