The mural was supposed to be finished by dinner service. Haley Leeper had been painting for six hours straight at the Four Seasons, her brush dancing across a wall the size of a small apartment, when she stepped back and realized something: she was no longer the girl who'd packed up her life with zero skiing experience and moved to Aspen just to see what would happen.
That girl had grown up in a town of 500 in Northwest Ohio, drawing on her family's farm and dreaming of art studios. She'd pole vaulted Division I, earned a fashion design degree, then made what she calls "the obvious next move" — ditching everything to work at a ski resort in Colorado. But standing there covered in paint, creating something that would transform an entire space, she'd become something else entirely.
Today, Haley splits her time between Jackson Hole and the Swiss Alps, chasing her toddler son Zylo around European mountain towns when she's not installing murals for luxury hotels or creating abstract pieces for collectors who want art that "actually does something to a space." It's a far cry from those early days when she was selling $30 drawings in her spare time.
The Long Route to the Mountains
The path from fashion design to full-time muralist isn't exactly linear, but for Haley, it made perfect sense. After college, she spent her twenties traveling through all 50 states and dozens of countries, working creative jobs and hosting her own podcast, painting whenever she could find the time and space.
"What started as $30 drawings in my free time became $100 pieces, then commissions," she explains. The progression happened gradually — a piece here, a small commission there, each one building confidence and expanding her vision. She was learning what would become her signature: bold, gestural work inspired by the places she lived and traveled.
The breakthrough came when those small commissions grew into something bigger. First local businesses, then major brands. Soon she was painting murals for Orangetheory Fitness locations from Paris to Shanghai, bringing what she calls "surfy tropical energy" and "colors you only see when you're moving through the world with intention" to spaces around the globe.
""I paint big. I travel often. I love experiencing life in color.""
From Ski Town to Swiss Alps
Jackson Hole became home base, but Haley's work has taken her far beyond Wyoming's borders. Her client list reads like a travel guide for the adventurous and well-heeled: Four Seasons Resorts, the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, and Hilton Hotels. She's collaborated with renowned artist Gemma O'Brien on projects for Tiffany & Co. in Shanghai and Google HQ.
But it's not just about the prestigious venues. Walk into any of her installations, whether it's a luxury mountain home or a boutique hotel, and you'll see work that captures something specific about place and moment. A sunrise hitting snowy peaks. The energy of first tracks on powder day. The way light moves through alpine air.
Her process is as adventurous as her subject matter. These aren't small canvases she can ship in a tube — Haley creates large-scale installations that require her to travel to the space, understand its energy, then transform it with paint and vision. She's become part traveling artist, part installation specialist, part mountain town local.
The Business of Big Art
Building a business around murals and large-scale abstract work requires a different approach than selling prints at craft fairs. Haley's pieces range from $597 original paintings to multi-thousand-dollar commissions that can take weeks to complete. Her "On The Slopes" series captures the motion and energy of skiing in abstract form, each piece a meditation on mountain movement and alpine light.
She's also created more accessible pieces — neck gaiters, prints, even candles — that let people bring a piece of that mountain energy home without commissioning a full mural. It's a smart approach that builds community around the work while funding the larger, more ambitious projects.
Life in Color
These days, you'll find Haley ordering "a capp at the cutest cafe in town," skiing with her husband Owen, or hopping on a plane to install a mural somewhere new. The family splits time between Jackson and Switzerland, a lifestyle that feeds directly into her work.
"Day to day, you'll find me ordering a capp at the cutest cafe in town, skiing with my husband Owen, chasing my son Zylo around the Alps, or hopping on a plane to install a mural somewhere new," she says. It's the kind of life that sounds like fiction, but makes perfect sense when you see her work — art that could only come from someone who's experienced "life in color."
From that farm girl in Ohio who dreamed of having her own studio and traveling to draw what she saw, Haley has built exactly the life she imagined. Except bigger, bolder, and spread across two continents. The murals she creates now transform entire spaces, but they're still rooted in that same impulse — to capture the world as she moves through it, one bold gesture at a time.
The next time you're in Jackson Hole, check the cafes for someone ordering a cappuccino with paint under her fingernails. Chances are, she's planning something that will change how you see the mountains.
