Eileen Nistler

Eileen Nistler – Colored Pencil Artist – born 1958

I have always loved to draw and I was blessed to have a mother who encouraged me. My mother would keep paper and pencils in her purse to hand to me when she wanted me to be still in church. My parents took me to Europe when I was in high school and my mother and I spent hours in art museums savoring the classics, our favorites being Rembrandt and Rubens. My parents later encouraged me to study abroad for a year and I traveled extensively during that year.

I studied architecture at Louisiana Tech University. At the time I felt that creating spaces with structures was the highest form of art, as one of my professors had said. I am not sure if I agree with that now, but it meant a lot to me then. I loved creating spaces and the thought and logic that goes with it. I worked as an architect for about seven years in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And then there was a fork in the road with unexpected changes. I moved back to Wyoming where I met the love of my life and we raised a family. We have lived in the home that I drew my first pictures in as a child on the family ranch in NE Wyoming.

When my youngest son was a year old I took up colored pencils. As an architect, I already had a decent set of colored pencils to create renderings of buildings, but I had no idea that professional art could be created with them until I saw a drawing by Carrie Ballantyne. I read every book I could get my hands on about colored pencils. I taught myself how to use them and thanks to the many hours of drafting and drawing in architecture, I was soon winning awards.

Since beginning with colored pencils I have purged my many sets of pencils to only include the highest quality and to only use pencils considered lightfast. This means that they don’t fade or change color over time.

Color pencils are the perfect medium for me. I love to be able to create precision with a sharp point. It is nice to be able to draw for an hour and walk away without washing paint brushes or cleaning up especially when I had small children.

There is a quote from Jordan Peterson that sums up how I feel about what I do, “Do what is meaningful, not expedient. Make something better every day”.

* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 16^th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.