Nila was born on Potrero Hill, San Francisco, in 1961. Her father, an aspiring painter, and her mother, later to become a writer, named her the Hindu word for blue skies. Ironically, the name would come to reflect Nila's long-standing fascination with cloud formations and atmosphere. Although they stayed in the Bay Area during her childhood, Nila and her Mother moved numerous times. Different houses, neighborhoods, and views, punctuate her past. The transient quality of her youth encouraged her to use the land, specifically the rolling California hills, to provide a sense of place and "home". She began taking summer classes at California College of Arts and Crafts when she was in junior high, and later earned a double major in Art and Art History from University of California at Santa Cruz. While in Santa Cruz she spent time painting the local landscape and learning through osmosis the philosophy of l'art pour l'art, that is, art for love, not for money. Santa Cruz artists were strongly influenced by the Society of Six, and took the hills in droves to paint plein aire. Although she valued the land and ocean, Nila was determined to experience life away from California. She needed a deeper, grittier sense of existence. Upon graduating, she moved to New York, where she spent the next seven years painting dark conceptual abstracts. In 1989, these atmospheric "abstract" paintings developed distinct horizon lines and she realized that she had come full circle and was painting landscapes again. Taking direction from her work, she returned to California to enjoy the fog, sunsets, and her beloved bleached hills. Conscious of her need for spiritual generosity, she focused on creating a more gentle life and expression than what she had known in the East. Her previously oppressive and heavy palette and subject matter gave way to a lighter, easier, work. In 1991 she moved her studio to the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts for an intense period of spiritual growth and recovery. The paintings from this period combine her interest in text, religion, and visual expansiveness, to create paintings that surround the viewer in the clouds (or Heaven). Later she moved her studio to Benicia, California to create more traditional landscapes. Nila found the balance of community, land, space, simplicity, and inspiration. Her work conveys the artist's journey as well as the peaceful awe one can experience in the restful palm of nature. In 1998 Nila moved to Oakland and married architect Tom Oakes. Since that time she has had her work handled by Dolby Chadwick in San Francisco and Studio 7 Fine Arts in Pleasanton.

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