Born in 1951 in Wallasey, Merseyside, Robbie Stocker left school at the age of sixteen and attended catering college to train as a chef. After successfully completing this course, his newly acquired culinary skills were then completely abandoned when he embarked on a new and very different career of boat building on the Mersey docks.
At the start of the seventies, on a venture to seek pastures new, he arrived in Brighton, where he made a living in a variety of jobs. It was in Brighton that he started painting and exhibiting his work for the first time. After an enjoyable few years living on the south coast - upon being enticed by a diverse and lively arts scene in Scotland, he then left to reside in Edinburgh.
In the mid seventies he moved back to the Wirral. At a loss as to which direction to take, the question was posed ‘Can you?’ . On saying ’Yes’ he successfully completed a number of workshops with groups of children from Liverpool involving mural and sculpture work .This experience set him on the path to an interesting and richly rewarding period of his life wherein he produced artwork with many contemporaries and arts groups throughout the North West.
Within a few short years, he held exhibitions of his work in major galleries in Liverpool and Chester. By the start of the eighties, he had gained experience of working within social groupings that were incredibly wide and diverse and then began to involve himself in vocational training. From this platform he then set up an arts and design based training scheme. The scheme developed art initiatives within the community which became a lifeline to many hundreds of people.
At the end of the eighties he had found a niche for himself as a consultant with councils, development corporations and national charities. This in turn lead him to submit tenders for public art work and thus he began a successful career as a public artist, completing public art works throughout the North West.
Through-out the nineties and into the new century he has continued his community, consultative, and commissioned work whilst returning to his original love of painting this in turn has developed into use of digital and photographic media allowing new form to his distinctive creative approach exhibitions of his work in the northwest are planned to commence from 2008.