Nicholas Coley was born in Connecticut in 1971 and raised in Muir Beach, California. He Studied art at L'ecole des Beaux Arts in Aix-en-Provence and at the Marchutz school in Le Tholonet, France. He holds a BA in painting from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and lived, studied, and painted for a year in a Vietnamese Buddhist Monastery in southwestern France.

Nicholas has traveled and painted extensively throughout Europe selling his work on the Charles Bridge in Prague, the Campo San Polo in Venice, and from the freshly harvested fields outside Duras, France before taking the trans-Siberian railroad to China. He has painted and lived in Seattle and Portland before returning to the Bay Area in 2000.

This stunning painting, "Shadows on the Side of Ridge" is oil on canvas and measures 3' x 4'. 

Nick Coley's work is shown in several galleries in the Bay Area. And here's a link to an article published about Nick in the San Francisco Chronicle: 
http://blog.sfgate.com/cityexposed/2015/02/15/coley/.