A Welsh Expressionist artist, Roberts was born in Ruabon in North East Wales, he moved to Neath at the age of seven when his father, a railway worker, was transferred. From 1928 to 1932 he studied part-time under William Grant Murray at Swansea School of Art. In 1945, after serving with the Royal Air Force during the War, Roberts met the Polish émigré painter Josef Herman who at the time was living in the neighbouring town of Ystradgynlais. Herman took him in the direction of Expressionism, introducing him to the work of German Expressionist Martin Bloch and the Belgian Expressionist Constant Permeke, who both became significant influences on Roberts’ work. He was one of the original 56 Group of Wales and in 1962 won the Byng-Stamper prize for landscape painting, judged by Sir Kenneth Clark – the winning painting now hanging in the National Museum of Wales. In 2001 to 2002 the National Library of Wales produced a Memorial Exhibition which toured Wales.