Robert Frame completed his artistic training at Pasadena City College and Pomona College in Claremont during the 1940s. He studied under Henry Lee McFee and Millard Sheets, two of the most important California modernist painters of the period. He spent the majority of his career in Santa Barbara, California.

Frame painted a variety of subjects including figures, landscapes, and interiors. Modernist in his technique, Frame’s palette almost always consisted of vibrant colors. His proficiency with composition and color gained him acclaim in the artist community.

Frame received several awards in the late 1940's and early 1950's, among these were awards from The National Academy of Design in New York and the Pasadena Art Museum in California. Frame had public exhibitions at the National Academy of Design, The San Francisco Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Desert Art Museum and the DeYoung Museum.

Still lifes were a quintessential subject of Frame’s work. Depicting a flower still-life by a window was a subject often painted by the artist. His use of saturated light coming through a window is a typical characteristic of the artist’s style. Frame was utilizing modernist concepts such as loose, expressionist strokes and flattened almost cubist qualities.  Architectural in composition, he creates geometric forms and spaces. His palette is reminiscent of the Bay Area school of painters, such as Roland Petersen and Richard Diebenkorn, who used bright, pastel, primary colors.