Nicola Jackson was born in Dunedin in 1960. She attended St Hilda's from 1971-1977. She is a nationally-recognised visual artist. In the 1970s the teaching of art at school was craft focused - Molly Kershaw taught macrame and basket weaving alongside drawing and painting; Gaynor Eaton taught Embroidery, which was a compulsory subject; Nan Green returned to New Zealand from the UK in 1975 and taught painting and art history. Nicola was the first student at St Hilda's to sit the Fine Arts Preliminary exam, a prerequisite for entry to a university art school. Nicola studied at the University of Canterbury from where she graduated with a DipFA in Engraving and DipFA Honours in Sculpture and was awarded the Ethel Rose Overton Scholarship. She has been the recipient of the Rita Angus Artist in Residency, a Goethe Institute scholarship to study in Germany and the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship. Commissions include making a new work for the opening of Te Papa and works held in private and public collections. For her art is life and life is art, she continues to work in sculpture and painting and be informed by her graphic sensibility and extensive craft skills. She has exhibited regularly since 1981. Her most recent major work is the anatomically themed museum style installation “The Bloggs”, made for the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and then toured.