Born in Hurstville, Sydney, in 1924, Robert is the third child in a family of four children of Albert Dickerson, tinsmith and his wife. He worked as a boy fashioning tin funnels and scoops in his father's home workshop, and in his leisure hours would visit the Art Gallery to study paintings, or the Museum where he would draw birds and skeletons of animals.

He attended Bourke Street Public School, a Primary school in Surry Hills, and left school just before turning 14 to work in manual jobs. As a teenager he trained at the gymnasium to become a boxer at aged 16, and fought number of fights as a professional boxer. When 18 he joined the R.A.A.F. and served during World War II in Borneo, the Halmaheras, New Guinea and Northern Australia. He began to paint and draw whilst waiting to be demobilised in Morotai in 1946, and on his return to Australia he took factory jobs and continued drawing and painting. He is completely self-taught and in 1959 started painting full-time. In the 1959 he joined with other Australian artists in the historic Antipodeans exhibition in Melbourne. In 1961 he was one of the artists in the Whitechapel Exhibition in London,. In 1963 his work was shown in a mixed exhibition in the Tate Gallery, and in 1967 in the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil. Also in this year his works toured the United States of America in the Harold Mertz Collection of Australian art.

Dickerson visited London briefly in 1972, returned in l973 for his London Qantas Gallery exhibition. In 1977 he showed at Der Koepelkerk, Amsterdam. He has also shown twice in mixed exhibitions in Hong Kong, and in solo exhibitions in London. where he is represented by England and Co Gallery. In 1995 he showed in an Exposition in the Cite des Arts, Paris, where he had tenure of the Moya Dyring studio and in 1996 he was represented in the Beijing International Art Fair where he won an award.