Robert Masla was born in New York City, in 1957. He began his formal training in drawing and oil painting at age eleven at the studio of Alton S. Tobey. He holds an M.F.A. from New York's City College, a diploma in painting from Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a B.F.A. from Tuft's University. Masla has taught drawing, painting, printmaking, design, and sculpture and has lectured on art and art history at institutions of higher learning throughout the Northeast.

In the 1970s, Masla coined the term Spiritrealism, to describe how the transcendental can manifest right before us -- in the realm of the so-called mundane. Spiritrealism describes how the sensitive artist finds in the ostensibly material elements of artwork and everyday life, a reality utterly spiritual. "We are given the opportunity to participate in creation every day of our lives," says Masla. "Creating art is a form of worship, a form of spirituality born through creative living."