After moving to the Bay Area her family joined a liberal California utopian group and Nicole was encouraged to be intuitive and to explore.

As a result, the conservative, buttoned-up world of Silicon Valley couldn't contain her for long. She travelled widely, studying, painting and exhibiting, finally settling in New York where she graduated with her MFA cum laude in 2009 from the New York Academy of Art.

The journalist Philip F. Clark has written: "Powell's figures reside in their worlds with total confidence of place and relationship to each other. Her erotic scenes balance sexual connection that is open and honest, with execution that is at once delicate, yet strong. It is the surface which becomes the point of focus for the viewer -- because the paint is applied with such delicacy and layering that one can't quite keep one's eyes from roaming over it. The subjects ... explore moments of deeply private passion, yet the relationships involved have much more meaning because of the way they are painted. The erotic act is that of painting itself, and it is a proud and beautiful act."

Nicole herself says: "Painting is just like love making. Sometimes slow, sensuous strokes of the brush and prolonged drags of charcoal are right. And other times quick splatters and fast lush swipes of colour are the 'technical narrative' a painting asks for in order to reveal the story. I actualize joy while I am painting, sort of rev up the engine and materialize sex, love, lust... whatever it is I am trying to evoke. Sex is a great focus for any painting. In a landscape I still concentrate on sexy lines. Hills water and sky can be the most evocative elements.