Robinson completed a four-and-a-half-year manufacturing jewellery apprenticeship with Max Wilson in Palmerston North in 1973 and then worked with Roy Evans at Arcade Jewellers in Timaru.
[1] From 1978 to 1980, he attended Otago Polytechnic School of Art in Dunedin where he was tutored in painting by Tom Field, Bernard Holman and Walden Tucker[2] and in sculpture by Fred Staub.
With printmaking, you've got to push a chisel through the lino, whereas jewellery is all about metal and sawing and hammering, filing and shaping.
[6] Amongst Robinson's many commissions have been set designs for theatrical productions of Entertaining Mr Sloane, School for Scandal, The Pearl Fishers and Twelfth Night, and book cover designs for Caclin (Lincoln University), Canzona, When Two Men Embrace: The New Zealand Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Poetry, SPORT 7, and The Journal of New Zealand Literature.
Robinson was one of twenty-six artists invited by the Department of Conservation to travel to Tamatea (Dusky Sound) in winter 2014 and summer 2015.
A book entitled Red Studio: Forty-Five Prints was published by Longacre Press in October 2009 and celebrates Robinson's print-making career.
The book contains a poetic narrative by Villiers and drawings by Robinson which reflect on the transition from late summer to early winter, in particular as it evolves in the south.
Anzac Day and reflections on the place of Gallipoli in the April journey become part of the narrative through drawings and words.