Nicole Béland was born in New York City though she lived the most part of her life in Montreal, Quebec. Interested by visual arts at a very young age, she drew countless hours and drove every family member crazy with her incessant doodling on everything in her path.

First schooled in History of the Arts at university, she opted for a more physical and outdoors career and became a geologist. After her hopes of being the greatest volcanologist in the world had been shattered by the realisation that she wanted kids but not barbecued kids, she chose to work in environmental consulting firms near Montreal. After ten years of trying to clean up a very messy planet, she resolved to work on a smaller scale with school kids and animated hundreds of visual arts projects for them.

She’s been dedicating herself solely to her career as a professional painter (the kind that paints masterpieces not drywall) and photographer since 2005. Once torn between her passion for visual arts and her passion for writing, she now combines all her favourite mediums in a very original little art book that will soon be published and entitled “Art is Oxygen”.