Clem Robins studied painting and drawing at the Art Students League of New York. His teachers included the Ash Can School legend Robert Phillipp, as well as modern realists such as Joseph Hirsch and Tedd Seth Jacobs. He learned human anatomy from the revered, and much beloved, Robert Beverly Hale.
Since leaving the League in 1979 he’s provided illustration for books and magazines. He has provided TV courtroom sketches for various local markets, and for CNN. His paintings are in numerous private collections, and in the Cincinnati Art Museum.
His 2003 book The Art of Figure Drawing was published by North Light Books, and was subsequently translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian and Chinese. From 1999 to 2007 he taught figure drawing and human anatomy at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Over the years he has returned again and again to illustrating Scripture. Biblical pictures include a wide range of subjects, from Elijah Before Ahab, The Walls of Jericho, The Wise Woman of Abel, The Capacity to Endure, Paul, Silas and Timothy, Peter at the Household of Cornelius and Esther and the Golden Sceptre.