merchant seaman, visiting South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. His work shows the influence of native African and South American art. He spent time with Native Americans in Canada and travelled on the River Plate and on the Amazon. Robinson took his family across Europe and spent some time in Paris where he befriended Raoul Dufy and he lived in Spain on the same street as Joan Miró. Robinson was a great believer that you couldn't be called an artist until you had visited Paris. During the turmoil of the 1940s he would often take his daughter Annie to Paris were they stayed in refugee camps. The gallery owner and dealer Hugh Charlton who was amongst the earliest to recognise Robinson's worth commented on his internationalism a few days before the artist's death:"He is very concerned about Chernobyl, Northern Ireland and any human rights issues. The Troubles in the North are a source of much hardship for him. He simply cannot understand terrorism. The violence drove him out of Belfast and into Dublin in the seventies, but he is back up in the Shankill Road again."Robinson showed one painting, simply entitled Painting in the inaugural Irish Exhibition of Living Art in the 1940s. In his early career Robinson would sell his paintings from the railings of St. Stephen's Green in Dublin and the Country Shop on St. Stephen's Green became his gallery. The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts hosted a one-man exhibition of Robinson's work in 1947. The exhibition was visited by the cast of Sadlers Wells Opera Company, when the mezza-soprano singer Anna Pollak, who, like Robinson had no formal training, purchased one of his works. Robinson returned to the CEMA Gallery in the following year where he showed street scenes, portraits, and landscapes. The exhibition was opened by the actor and Head of CEMA in Northern Ireland, Jack Loudan. Robinson also arranged an exhibition of Ulster peasant art at Mills and Gray's Gallery on Wellington Street in Belfast in November 1948. The exhibition showcased craftwork from across Northern Ireland and consisted of pottery, basketwork, toys and painted linen. By the end of the 1940s Robinson had become an established artist, lauded by the young regionalist poet and founding member of CEMA, John Hewitt, and he was an active figure on the Belfast Arts scene. Amongst his social group numbered local artists such as Alicia