Robert Tilling was born in Bristol in 1944 and studied architecture and art education between 1961 and 1966. He was appointed Head of Art at Victoria College in September 1968, and has lived and worked in Jersey since then. He is married with two daughters.

Robert makes use of drawing and acrylics as well as pure watercolour, but it is perhaps the latter medium for which he has become best known, predominantly choosing as his subject the Jersey coastline. He treats this with a semi-abstract style, hinting at a taste for abstraction that is further revealed in other areas of his work. Particular profiles of the island are most often rendered in silhouette amidst a swirl of imaginatively coloured sea and sky, as though captured at dusk or early in the morning. He says of his own work that "a great deal is based on the landscape and is composed by a process of imaginative reconstruction in which both observation and memory play important parts".

He has gained a number of awards including the Cleveland Drawing Biennale and two at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours for "the most outstanding work". He has illustrated a number of books and publications for, among others, Charles Causley and Spike Milligan. His paintings have been illustrated in over thirty books and magazines. He has also lectured widely, including the Tate Gallery and at Exeter University. His writings on jazz and blues have been published on both sides of the Atlantic.