Robert Tem­ple Sum­mers, II was born on August 13, 1940 in Cle­burne, Texas. He began cre­at­ing fig­ures and ani­mals with bread dough at the age of two, was paint­ing and doing pen­cil sketch­es by school age, grad­u­at­ing to oil at the age of nine.

Sum­mers has had no for­mal art train­ing, save a short course in mix­ing col­ors at age 15, where he was told a short time lat­er that he had sur­passed his instruc­tor and was wast­ing his time there. He began pro­fes­sion­al­ly to explore his God-giv­en tal­ent in 1964. Since that time he has worked in var­i­ous medi­ums includ­ing; Egg and Acrylic Tem­pera, Oil, Dry-brush Water­col­or, Pas­tel and Pen­cil. He is equal­ly tal­ent­ed with wax and clay, cur­rent­ly divid­ing his time between paint­ing and sculpt­ing. He describes his flat work as “painter­ly”.

Sum­mers resides in his boy­hood home of Glen Rose, Texas with his wife Boo, work­ing with him are two of their three sons. Robert serves as Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the Cre­ation Evi­dence Muse­um and has trav­eled to Turkey and New Guinea on expe­di­tions in that capac­i­ty. Sum­mers plays bag­pipes, prac­tices fal­con­ry, sings Con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian music, has played lead rolls in sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tions and he loves wildlife and the cow­boy spir­it of the small Texas town.

Awards

Award­ed the Acrylic Divi­sion Award in 1972 by the Amer­i­can Artist Pro­fes­sion­al League.

In 1973 he helped orga­nize the Texas Asso­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al Artists and served as their first president.

One of his great­est hon­ors came on July 4, 1975 when Gov­er­nor Dolph Briscoe and the Texas Leg­is­la­ture named him as the Offi­cial Texas Bicen­ten­ni­al Artist.

On July 4, 1975 he was pre­sent­ed the Amer­i­can Air­lines’ Amer­i­cana Award for Art, pre­sent­ed by Randy Steffen.

Select­ed nation­al­ly by the Franklin Mint as one of ten Gold Medal Award win­ners dur­ing the mint’s intro­duc­tion into fine art reproductions.

In 1976 was award­ed with the Cul­tur­al Achieve­ment Award for Art by the West Texas Cham­ber of Commerce.

Dur­ing the Texas Asso­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al Artists awards ban­quet Sum­mers received 6 of a pos­si­ble 11 medals. His paint­ing, “For­bid­den Wilder­ness”, took First Place for Best Oil, Best in Show, Most Pop­u­lar (vot­ed on by guest) and the T.A.P.A. Mem­ber­ship Award.

In both 1977 and 78 annu­al T.A.P.A. shows Sum­mers was award­ed with the Gold Medal for Best Oil.

Recip­i­ent of the Randy Stef­fen Annu­al Award on July 4, 1981.

Named as the Offi­cial Sesqui­cen­ten­ni­al Artist of Texas by the 69th Texas Leg­is­la­ture in July 1987.

In 1995 Sum­mers was named Most Favorite Son by the Glen Rose/Somervell Coun­ty Cham­ber of Commerce.

Named West­ern Artist of the Year for 2003 by the Acad­e­my of West­ern Art.

His works have appeared in hun­dreds of news­pa­pers and peri­od­i­cals world-wide, includ­ing; Texas High­ways, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, South­west Art.