Julie Olson has been making art since she could first hold a pencil. Winning the local town's Centennial logo contest at 16 propelled her into her own business doing murals, paintings, and graphic design at a young age.

She graduated with a BFA from Arizona State University and moved to Washington, DC, soon becoming an art director/senior designer and illustrator for USDA 1990-2004. She also (in a mid-life crisis) received a graduate degree in landscape design and sustainable landscaping in 2009 from The George Washington University.

Moving back to her family farm in Eastern North Dakota in 2009 to care for her elderly mother, she rekindled her love of painting through an oil painting class. She eventually cleaned out her dad's old workshop and set up her own art studio. Olson received a sizable grant from North Dakota Vocational Rehabilitation Department for a start-up art business, opening The Middle of Nowhere Studio in 2016.

Olson has sold paintings around the world (Germany, England, India, Australia, to name a few) and US since 2017 through social media and showing and selling art locally since 2018. Specializing in abstracts in alcohol ink, watercolor ink, or acrylic paint, with a current focus on alcohol inks and mixed media, she often uses iridescent, color-shifting, and metallic inks, holographic glitter, mica, and holographic foil in her paintings. She gets her inspiration from native flowers, woodlands, and prairie, plus her own flower gardens on her family farm in rural North Dakota.

In 2023, Olson entered two paintings in the Annual Pekin Days Art Show (Pekin, ND) and won first place and honorable mention in her category. She also won the Eugene Myers Purchase Award from the University of North Dakota and her painting, “At First, Just Ghostly”, will be hung in the President’s Collection and have a permanent place in the UND art collections. She has shown work at the Grand Forks Arts Center (Art for Vets), Alerus Center, Altru Hospital, previous Art & Wine Walks and local businesses in Grand Forks, Larimore, Pekin (North Dakota) and East Grand Forks, Minnesota.