Leah Chappell is a visual artist from Oakland, California.  Born in Spokane, Washington in the summer of 1979, Leah was the fourth of six children.  Early on, her mother and older sisters instilled in her the love of drawing, and at the age of six she decided she wanted to become a fashion designer.  For the next 17 years most of Leah’s drawing focused on women’s clothing. Eventually, she enrolled in a fashion design program at a local junior college, where she realized that the fashion industry was not the place for her.  Then, because her true love was music, she began to draw the musicians who inspired her.

In 2003, Leah moved from Oakland to South Florida after vacationing in Miami. She fell in love with the tropical climate and the Caribbean culture. The air in Miami provided her with a new outlook on life and an abundance of inspiration.  Wanting to move away from the medium that she was most familiar with (colored pencils), Leah purchased her first set of oil paints.   Because she had never taken art classes, she was unaware that oil paints are not intended for use on paper. As a result, what is perhaps her most notable piece, “Bob Marley,” was painted on a sheet of paper torn from a sketchbook.

After completing several paintings, Leah returned to the Bay Area. In 2005, her first group exhibition was held in San Francisco, with her first solo show following in 2006. She continued to create, drawing inspiration from the the Bay’s rich cultural heritage. It was at this time that she was introduced to Bollywood and Buddhism by friends from South Asia. She painted her first mural featuring Indian actors Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai inside a Pakistani restaurant in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

In early 2008, Leah was invited to the Sakya Monastery in Seattle, Washington to observe the process of painting a protector diety statue. There, she met H.H. Jigdal Dagchen Sakya and learned techniques of traditional Tibetan Buddhist painting from Lama Migmar Tsering, the monastery’s resident artist.  Later that year, she saw H.H. The Dalai Lama speak at Qwest field in downtown Seattle.  This life-changing experience led her to produce a Thangka in her own style depicting His Holiness.  This piece, entitled “Light of the World,” was created to raise awareness for the Tibetan cause and was donated to the San Francisco Regional Tibetan Youth Congress.

Leah currently lives between Miami and New Jersey, where she continues to create art that she hopes will spread a message of love, peace and harmony across the globe.