Born in Boston, Nina Bohlen graduated from Radcliffe College in 1953. It was there that she met Hyman Bloom, who was teaching at Harvard.  She studied drawing with him at Harvard and painting in the evening at his studio on Huntington Ave, Boston.

Since 1959 she has exhibited extensively, both solo and group exhibitions.

She has had the opportunity to travel to exotic places to visit her peripatetic siblings, to Thailand to visit her brother and family, where she saw her first Asian puppets. To Kenya to draw Olive Baboons for the book Baboon Orphan written by her sister Diana Harding. To Sierra Leone with her sister and husband Dr Robert Harding, who were taking a census of animals and birds in a particular area for a National park and finally to Venezuela to study the Wedge Cap Capuchin Monkeys that were living in the Forest of Hato Pinero.

Nina divides her time between her studios in Lubec, ME and Waltham, MA.  When she is not in her studio she enjoys playing the French Vielle A Roue, in English, Hurdy Gurdy.