Nancy Andruk Olson has been a lifetime painter. She started painting as a child with her mother, who is an art teacher, and never really stopped. She attended the Art Center College of Design as a high school student. She has a BFA in painting from BYU, where she spent most of her time working with Bruce Hixson Smith. She also has a Post- Baccalaureate Certificate from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She tends to paint quickly and directly using a lot of impressionist techniques. She loves the improvisation and the interaction of the paint. The interplay of the materials is part of the language for her. She makes a lot of her own paint to ensure the intensity of the pigment is exactly where she wants it to be. The main element that she focuses on is color. She is most inspired by other artists who focus on color to capture memories such as Pierre Bonnard, Wolf Kahn and John McCallister.