Phil Spaziani was born and raised in Winthrop, Massachusetts, a sea-side town not far from Boston. After a stint in the navy as a photographer, he attended Massachusetts College of Art and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1959. In 1961 Phil and his wife, Lorraine, moved to upstate New York where he began what would become a 36-year career teaching art to schoolchildren.   The first six years were spent in the Glens Falls city schools after which he accepted a teaching position in the Scotia-Glenville high school. He retired from teaching in 1997.

Phil earned a Masters in Studio Art at SUNY Albany in 1971, majoring in drawing and print making. In cooperation with other SUNY graduates and faculty he was a founding member of the Graphic Artists of New York. This association produced numerous local exhibits, as well as a national traveling exhibition. In addition to representation by the Allen Stone Gallery in NYC and the Franz Bader Gallery in Washington, DC, Phil has had affiliations with several galleries in the upstate NY area. Over the past thirty five years, he has exhibited widely in Capitol District venues gathering accolades as his art career progressed. Phil has won prizes in several Hudson-Mohawk Regional exhibitions, the Saratoga Springs Outdoor Art Show and the annual Schenectady Stockade Art Show. His work is in public and private collections in the United States and Europe.

For many years Phil Spaziani was well known for his large-format, semi-surreal ink drawings, but a flying accident in June of 1991, which left him a wheelchair using paraplegic, led him in a new artistic direction. Unable to easily handle the oversized papers he preferred and to reduce his reliance on other people, Phil decided to work on a small scale. To challenge himself further, he changed medium (acrylic paint) and subject (landscape).

A recent exhibit of his works entitled "Picturing a Village" presented almost thirty views of the Village of Ballston Spa, where he currently lives, and the surrounding area. These paintings reflect his long standing interest in historic preservation -   he is an active member of the Historic District Commission of The Village of Ballston Spa - as well as his love of light and its interactions with both manmade structures and the natural world.