Over the last 10 years Robert Masla's painting has shifted to focus primarily on the landscape. Working to uncover the universal language contained within the natural world, Masla portrays what he terms Spiritrealism --- filling the common daily setting with an aura of mystical divinity and the suggestion of other worldly experiences so the transcendental can manifest right before us, in the realm of the so-called mundane, has been one of his goals. One of the joys he has found in painting the landscape around him is to, " take things that we might pass by every day and bring them into focus. To see them again as if for the first time."

" ...(Masla's) visions of trees against the sky are offered as prayers connecting the viewer to the earth and the infinite. There is a joy in the visible world and a sense of wonder, as the sky changes from first light to midday to dusk to night." - Art New England Magazine. "...because he recognizes the spiritual in all physical forms, he describes familiar objects with verisimilitude and employs vivid hues that suggest the energy of the life force, the light that is internal, or spiritual, as well as visual." - Springfield Sunday Republican.

Born in New York City , in 1957 the artist began his formal training in painting and drawing at age eleven in the studio of Alton S. Tobey. He holds a diploma in painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a BFA from Tufts University, and received his graduate degree in painting from City College, City University of New York. He has lectured and taught painting, drawing and art history at several colleges and institutions and conducts workshops from his studio and home in rural Ashfield, Massachusetts where he lives with his wife and three children.

Masla has an extensive record of solo and group exhibitions spanning over 20 years and his work is placed among the acquisitions of many discerning corporate and private collections. He has also authored Windows to the Spiritual World (1997, Transcendental Art Associates), the catalog Spiritrealism - Places of Power, Sacred Objects, Magical Spaces, as well as two essays, entitled: The Healing Art of the Huichol Indians and Spiritrealism: Art as a Vehicle for Awakening Light Within Matter."