Born in 1968, Robert Larson grew up in Santa Cruz, CA, a beach town nestled between redwood covered mountains and the waters of the Monterey Bay. There he ran amuck with neighborhood kids, spending long summer days visiting the numerous spring fed ponds that percolated up throughout the neighborhood, and playing in the forbidden quarries with his best friend, John Vallier.

In the summer of 1972 Robert's family, including cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, traveled to France and lived on a small farm in Bussang. The smell of the cows, which lived directly beneath the living quarters, and the pungent cheese room which one passed through to enter the house, were the backdrop for many vivid memories shared by the entire family.

In 1973-1974, Robert's father, Kenneth Larson, taking a year sabbatical, loaded the family onto the S.S. France for its last Trans-Atlantic crossing and moved to Kidlington, England—a village 5 miles North of Oxford. Robert's mother Janet set up household in a modest home across the street from the local pub, and while Kenneth studied British Primary Schools, Robert and his sister Joan attended English State Schools.

While the family was living in England Janet's grandmother, Aurora Trethewey, died at the age of 99. Robert's great grandmother, though barely known by Robert while she was alive, became a tremendously influential figure in Robert's life. On returning to the States, Robert discovered his great grandmother's passion for collecting shells, rocks and insects. After her death the collection was kept in his grandparents' house where Robert often visited. The tall cases filled with specimens towered overhead and chests of drawers with row after row of carefully arranged and labeled shells and rocks, elicited a hushed reverence and awe. Robert's great-grandmother, a self-taught naturalist, became an enigmatic figure and inspiration for Robert as he studied her collections and began collecting natural specimens and artifacts himself. Her collection visibly represented countless patient hours of collecting, organizing and preserving—a tangible record of focus, perseverance, and a long, active life.

Robert grew up with art. His parents were avid art collectors, collecting the paintings and pastels of English artist John Faulkner . John Faulkner became a mentor, teacher and friend to the aspiring young artist. Robert's early exposure to John Faulkner's abstract, and figurative art, and found object assemblages were paramount in shaping his identity as an artist. With the encouragement of an inspired high school art instructor, Kattie Harper, Robert began to consider attending Art school.

After graduating from Santa Cruz High School in 1986 Robert attended Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. Known throughout California as a community college with an unsurpassed art curriculum and esteemed faculty, Robert's art education began in earnest. He spent the next two years taking art history courses, figure drawing, two and three dimensional design and eventually settled into studying painting with artist and Instructor Ron Milhoan. Milhoan's own intensely personal work, intuitive and physical, greatly influenced Larson's work.

After winning a painting scholarship Larson attended the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland California 1988-1989. There he studied painting with Raymond Saunders. Saunder's urban, mixed media paintings introduced Larson to the appropriation of image and object in the pop tradition of Rauschenberg's combine paintings and collages. For Saunders music, Jazz and the street were his muse. Signs, Lettering, urban detritus and ephemera with its innate graphic nature were sampled, cut up and re-contextualized in Saunder's work.

While attending C.C.A.C. Larson lived in an Industrial part of East Oakland within a community of older artists who had converted abandoned warehouses, factories and foundries into live/work artist studios. Larson shared a studio with conceptual artist Mark Oliver. Oliver's, no holds barred art attack upon the object, and his insistence upon conceptual priority were beyond Larson's own artistic maturity at the time, but that year of working together under the same roof left an indelible impression upon Larson's artistic psyche.

Living in Oakland yielded yet another important development for Larson and his art. After classes Robert began taking walks along the railroad tracks that ran behind his studio, exploring the industrial working class neighborhood that contrasted so sharply with his picturesque and privileged hometown of Santa Cruz. Here in the open air he felt a strange urgency to create unlike anything he had ever felt in the studio. He began collecting the scraps of rusted metal and distressed wood, which could be found in abundance along the tracks—overflow from the many junkyards that lined them. Bringing his tools with him in a knapsack he assembled his constructions in the field leaving them where he worked on them and often returning with just the right object to complete them. This deeply profound connection Larson made with the urban environment has remained an essential part of his art today.

In 1989 Larson returned to Santa Cruz supporting himself as a carpenter and house painter in order to maintain a studio and continue his art. For the next 5 years he continued his investigation of urban art, making weekend trips to Oakland and other Bay Area Urban Centers in search of material and ideas.

Then In 1995 Larson began working with sculptor Richard Deutsch, assisting Richard with the creation of his large-scale sculptures, environments, and public commissions. Deutsch's sculptural understanding of gravity, space and the monumental have significantly influenced Larson's work. From 1995 to 2002, with Deutsch's coaching, Larson worked on his seven year project, "Evidence," an exploration of the urban landscape and the found object.