Painter and printmaker Robert Dallas Stapleton was born in El Paso, Texas on Februaru 13, 1919. His family moved to Santa Monica, California when Stapleton was a child, affording him the opportunity to take lessons with noted printmaker Sueo Serisawa and attend the Cahn Art School in Hollywood. Art remained a secondary pursuit to his job as a pipeline engineer in Southern California for thirty-four years, having his most prolific years in the 1940s and early 1950s. He exhibited at the Los Angeles County Fair in 1940 and was a member of the California Watercolor Society beginning in 1942. He died in Pacific Palisades on March 16, 1991.