Biography Born in Manhattan, to a musical and artistic family, Robert Paul Saphier began his artistic development very early. At about the age of three he produced surprisingly complex drawings and, under the tutelage of his father, began to play the piano. At twelve, he realized a series of strange looking, mask-like faces of tortured souls in bright colors.

Paul was educated at the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan; the School for Visual Arts in Manhattan; Syracuse University, where he received his B.A.; graduate studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Columbia University, Teachers College, where he received his M.F.A. In 1970, Paul began to experience the first symptoms of what would be positively diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis only in 1978. The intervening eight years, as the disease slowly progressed, were eventful in Paul's creative and spiritual development. In 1971, he made his first trip to India. He and a friend spent four weeks traveling in northern India and Nepal. Deeply impressed by the spiritual beauty and power of the Indian and Himalayan art he encountered, the artist began a fundamental reassessment of the importance and purpose of art. His painting began to reflect a deeper beauty and simplicity, flowing as it did from a deeper contemplation of nature and reality. In December 1982, Paul made his second trip to India. By this time his illness somewhat constrained his movement and he sat deeply concentrating for many hours at a time, drawing and painting the beautiful, sacred Arunachala Mountain. On this trip, his companion was Evelyn Kaselow. In March 1984, they were married. Paul and Evelyn began vacationing in the area of the St. Lawrence River known as the "Thousand Islands" where Evelyn's family had always summered. Paul soon grew to love the place. He would spend long hours everyday sitting in the open, doing watercolors and drawings of the beautiful river. The couple bought an old farmhouse there and now divide their time between Queens, New York, in winter--when Paul concentrates on egg tempera paintings and his works of "spiritual geometry"-- and Hammond, New York, near the St. Lawrence, in summer. There the artist finds tremendous creative inspiration from the beauty and power of the river and the land surrounding it. Besides works done in New York, at the St. Lawrence River, and in India, the body of the artist's work also includes paintings done on the Pacific Coast and mountains, in the Southwest, Florida, and in the Caribbean. His mature works are focused, harmonious, and visionary expressions of what he sees as the spiritual reality permeating all things.

The work of Robert Paul Saphier is in private collections throughout the United States. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited at the I.B.M. Gallery of Science and Art, the Cork Gallery at Lincoln Center, the Cigna Corporation Lobby Gallery in Philadelphia and other locations. His works have received numerous awards in national and regional exhibitions. In 1987 his work was discussed on New Jersey Public Television. Recently, one of his paintings was selected for the "Art in Embassies Program" sponsored by the United States State Department.