Fred Nall Hollis, known internationally simply as "Nall," was born April 21, 1948 in Troy, Alabama. He began to draw at age four. He moved with his parents to Arab, Alabama. When he graduated from high school, he had never had an art teacher. Over eight books have been written about or by him. In 1996, the book NALL Technique and Symbol written by Alain Renner, director of Sotheby's Monte-Carlo and Paris, was published.

NALL has degrees in Art, Political Science and Psychology from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In 1971, NALL left the United States to study in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Salvador DALI advised him, "Draw from life, draw, again and again.....