Jen Roby, 34, had spent much of her professional life in the world of marketing, but her world changed the moment a rough mountain biking crash left her with a concussion, a stutter that would stick around for six months, and the desire to seek something more.

“Life is short, and I realized I want to do what I want to do right now, and that helped spur that,” said Roby, in reference to her recent dive into full-time professional artistry that followed her fall on an Evergreen trail in April of 2023. “It kind of defined my life. And then I got the van, all in two weeks after that concussion. It set the sails in a different direction.”

Also known by her social media pseudonym Nomad No Plans, Roby has been honing her creative skills since age 13, though she had held off on leaving the corporate world behind to pursue her passion full-time – until that crash.

A fourteener finisher and avid outdoorsperson, Roby is best-known for a piece she created that depicts all of the state’s 14,000-foot peaks, carefully organized to include mountain ranges and difficulty classifications, among other details. She also sells flag stickers on her website, allowing purchasers to ‘check off’ the mountains they’ve summited over time.

And while that piece is sure to be a favorite among Colorado’s mountain climbing community, her pursuit to capture Centennial State peaks doesn’t stop there.

More recently, Roby has taken the dive into capturing the state’s iconic landscape in watercolors, having already sold paintings that capture recognizable features of Capitol Peak, Longs Peak, and Crested Butte, among many other Colorado destinations.

“The reason I started all of these was as a way for me to go do things by myself. I was always waiting around on others, so I started creating these visuals of how I could safely climb mountains myself. Everyone was giving me positive feedback and I thought ‘I should share this,'” said Roby of her more recent efforts, which she regularly shares with her 1,000s of followers on Instagram.

Roby has spent recent months capturing the places she’s traveled on canvas – spots in Colorado and beyond. And she has a strong preference for painting scenes she’s seen with her own two eyes.

“The world around us is just really inspiring,” said Roby of how she creates, currently relying on watercolors and acrylics to capture scenes that catch her attention. As she’d started to spend more and more time outside over the years, she found it difficult to come back to the computer to create. And after all, she prefers to get her hands messy with large format creations anyway.

Roby’s work in the field of the arts stretches beyond selling colorful images of mountain scenes, too, to include leading a monthly ‘intro to watercolors’ class for women, as well as youth lessons. She’s inspired by introducing more people to the passion that continues to guide her life.

This same mindset of pulling others into her own passions is also seen in another piece she’s particularly proud of – a map of Colorado’s hot spring destinations. She describes it as a glove box guide, printed on waterproof paper and meant to assist people seeking to track down some of the state’s most beautiful spots. Her Colorado Trail Map exists in a similar vein, helping others explore the iconic route while giving herself an excuse to do the same.

Roby hopes to accomplish big goals in her newfound pursuit as a full-time artist, too, taking on commission work from her fans while amassing a gallery-worthy collection of pieces. Her dream is to be featured in an Aspen exhibit someday.

Inspired by the world around her and always on the hunt to capture another natural destination on canvas, Jen Roby is an outdoor field artist that’s sure to attract attention from those around the globe who have fallen in love with the outdoor recreation scene in the Centennial State.

Those looking to help support Jen Roby in her pursuit as a full-time artist can find prints for purchase on her website – or contact her directly and she’ll create a custom mountain scene of your favorite peak for a few hundred bucks.

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