A Life of Resilience and Form Robert Dickerson was a self-taught Australian figurative painter who rose from a life of significant hardship to become a highly recognized figure in the art world. Growing up in Sydney during the Depression era, his early years were marked by labor; at age fourteen, he worked in a factory and trained as a boxer, touring for four years with the Jimmy Sharman Boxing Troupe. His path to professional artistry was unconventional, involving periods of shoveling coal to support his family and living in a caravan. It was not until he was thirty-five that he turned prof…