Kendall Kippley’s world is large, vibrant and full of color. 

She lives in landscapes, cascades and concepts with lots and lots of water that she seeks to bring to life. 

More often than not, Kippley can make it happen.  

She can do it in her head, on paper and on walls. Yes, walls — that is her jam. 

Chances are you have seen some of Kippley’s work, if passing through the RiNo Art District, downtown Denver, the Aurora Highlands or Pearl Street in Boulder.  

Kippley, 31, is a muralist — an artist who creates large-scale artworks on walls, more often than not in public spaces. Her work focuses on elements of water, including glaciers, mountain streams and lakes that define not only Colorado but other regions, including internationally. Her work has been featured in France, and it will be in Mexico this October.   

Most of all, Kippley is driven. 

“I’m very passionate about my art and what I try and represent with it,” Kippley said. “My goal is to create artwork that feels connected to the place, celebrating the beauty, energy and ever-changing nature of the environment we call home.” 

One does not typically fall out of bed, become a muralist, and paint 4,000-square-foot walls. 

Kippley didn’t, either.  

Growing up in Wash Park 

Kippley’s passion for art and appreciation of it began at a young age. She recalls taking in Colorado’s beauty on hikes with her mom, dad and sisters. 

Her parents embraced the creative zest, allowing her to decorate and redecorate her bedroom growing up. 

“I would paint my room — change the colors,” Kippley said. “I didn’t realize it until recently, but I would actually paint murals in it when I was in elementary school. I would do different themes like a jungle theme or a beach scene.”  

Just before graduating elementary school, Kippley drew as hard of a line with her parents as one her age could. Her older sister was attending the neighborhood’s middle school, and Kippley had no desire to go there. 

Her fifth-grade art teacher intervened and came up with a possible solution: Apply to the Denver School of the Arts. The catch was Kippley had to supply a portfolio, interview with the school, and had to audition by drawing a still life within a time frame. 

“That was a lot of pressure for me as an 11-year-old, and it was pretty rigorous, but it was the best decision I could have ever made,” Kippley said. “It definitely shaped who I am today.” 

Kippley became classically trained at the school. She also met her now best friend, Anna Charney, along the way, who also happened to become a muralist. 

When the time came to think about where to attend college, Kippley found herself at another fork in the road.  

She had applied and was accepted at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Savannah College of Art and Design and Colorado State University. 

Kippley, ultimately, decided to stay in-state and attend CSU.  

“I loved the campus and had a lot of friends going there from high school,” Kippley said. “I felt like maybe there were parts of me that missed having a typical high school experience. I felt like going to a big school like CSU where I could be exposed to all of that, and so many people from different backgrounds would be exciting.” 

Epiphany in Fort Collins 

Kippley assimilated well once she arrived on campus in Fort Collins. She socialized and expanded her network of friends. Most important, Kippley connected with Erika Osborne, a popular professor of painting.  

One of the reasons Kippley enrolled at CSU was to explore other professional and career pathways.  

Like so many in her generation, Kippley is passionate about the environment, which is conveyed in her work. In addition to taking art classes, Kippley took courses in natural resources and global environmental sustainability. 

Still, Kippley began questioning whether CSU was the right choice, given that she had been previously accepted by so many elite art schools. 

“I was considering transferring,” Kippley said. “I was in classes with a lot of kids who were art majors who weren’t taking it seriously. I was like, ‘Am I in the right environment?’”  

Osborne sensed what Kippley was wrestling with and encouraged her not only to remain at CSU but to mesh her passion for the environment with her art. 

“She kind of helped me refine what I wanted to get out of a college education, which involved a secondary degree in natural resources,” Kippley said. “I ended up studying environmental science, climate sustainability in addition to painting and drawing. That’s what solidified what I do now, for sure.”   

Osborne said Kippley embodied the traits one might find in a unicorn. 

“She was very driven and incredibly dedicated with her time,” Osborne said. “Plus, she was so creative and talented. She is the only student I’ve had at CSU who has successfully made a career of muralism.” 

Osborne began seeing flashes of where Kippley’s work was progressing first in the art and environment course she taught and then during Kippley’s independent senior study. 

“She was really defining her practice at that point,” Osborne said. “She was already working really large. She was already incorporating resins and spilling paint, and then spray paint even started to enter the picture in her paintings.

“When I saw the move to muralism, it felt like ‘oh, yeah, that makes sense.’ The other thing she has that a lot of artists don’t have is entrepreneurialism. She’s savvy. She saw opportunities to take her materials to the next level and she did it.”  

Into the spotlight 

Knowing that she wanted to break into the world of muralism, Kippley sought help from a familiar ally: her childhood friend and classmate Charney, who had already begun her work in muralism.   

“I just asked her if she needed any help,” Kippley said. “I was just carrying paint and other things, helping her when I could, on some of the big walls she was working on. My apprenticeship just kind of became active after a few months.” 

Kippley and Charney continue to collaborate on projects.  

Kippley caught her so-called big break in 2021 when “You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone” was installed on the highly trafficked Pearl Street Mall as part of the StreetWise Mural Festival that year.  

The mural draws on real glacial data to shape its abstract composition. It features melting ice forms to evoke the disappearing cryosphere. Kippley said it was designed to resonate on both emotional and scientific levels, and that her goal was for it to transform public space into a site of reflection, urgency and connection. 

“That was my big break,” Kippley said. “It led me to work a lot with sustainability and nonprofits who work with climate legislation. It is cool, because I kind of feel like I am able to be the voice and bridge between people’s emotions and science.”     

Another one of Kippley’s well-known pieces is “Don’t Let Me Go,” which she created in 2022, again in Boulder, as part of the Water is Life Exhibition at the Dairy Arts Center.  

It directly addresses a calving glacier with huge pieces falling into the ocean. Indirectly, the piece addresses a breakup Kippley had experienced at the time. 

“I felt like I could relate to what I was going through at the time with these natural forces that are happening to these glaciers and causing them to break off and melt,” Kippley said. “I kind of thought of the glacier as saying, ‘how could you let this beautiful, precious thing fall off?’” 

Flipping the switch 

The thing about creative people — more specifically, the driven ones — that Kippley says holds true is that they possess an intrinsic competitive side. She says it’s not so much about competing with others, but with one’s self to dominate and take things to a higher level. 

“It’s a lot like being an athlete,” Kippley said. “There is a certain switch that flips, and there is a lot of adrenaline and stress that you feed off. I like it when the pressure is on me.”  

For Kippley, some of the pressure comes behind the scenes, when she has to reach out with proposals to government officials, organizations and individuals.  

“You have to be able to handle rejection in this field,” Kippley said. “I’ve been turned away from jobs because my ideas are too complex.” 

Carla Ferreira, CEO of The Aurora Highlands, was so taken by a piece Kippley had installed that she took a picture of it and then, as luck would have it, later that night the two were at the same event. The two hit it off and Kippley installed a large-scale mural inside a pedestrian tunnel at The Aurora Highlands public art park. 

“She is just the nicest human,” Ferreira said. “She cares so much about the environment, sustainability, water and ice. She brings all of those concepts together with her art.” 

First and foremost, though, Kippley is having fun.  

“I tell myself every day that I have to be having fun doing what I do,” Kippley said. “If I’m not having fun, then it doesn’t feel true to me and I shouldn’t be doing it. I haven’t had that problem yet with any of my work.”