Gnarled junipers cast long shadows across the auburn sand of the Utah Desert. Miles from any road, Cody Chamberlain treks through sagebrush and silence as lizards skitter over sandstone bedrock. Though he wears a wide-brimmed hat and a breathable button-up hiking shirt, typical attire for a desert dweller, his rucksack is packed with sketchpads and pencils.

He searches for inspiration for his next painting to adorn the stretched linen of his canvas with textured oil paint that matches the terracotta hue beneath his leather boots – boots that have seen thousands of miles on trail.

Grounded and fervently passionate, Chamberlain approaches each painting with respect, exactness and an innate desire to protect what he loves. His art is advocacy, each painted portal inviting people to care about the fragile landscapes of their home desert.

Just as trails in the High Desert and red rocks to the south lead to sweeping vistas only after a spell of hard work, Chamberlain’s painting process follows the same ambling journey. Much of it is spent outdoors. “Admittedly, because I can’t stay away,” he said with a laugh.

The artist often treks miles into the desert to scout inspiration for his next painting, but first without the heavy canvas. Rather than capturing a single moment, he visits a site multiple times throughout the year, for days on end, to learn a place intimately. “I want to know, ‘What does it smell like after a rain? What birds are flying above? What’s the light doing?’”

After sketching on location and taking extensive photographs, Chamberlain returns to his Salt Lake City studio to paint on homemade canvases, some up to 16 feet long. The panorama’s large scale allows him to portray the vastness of the landscape. The canvas-making process is an intentional, old-world craft using materials from the earth – Belgian linen aluminum panels and rabbit-skin glue. Building the painting surface by hand reveals subtle bumps, cracks and slight imperfections in the canvas that reflect the textured landscapes he paints. “If you make everything perfect and color in the lines, you rob life from the painting,” he said.

Once a painting is done, he reunites his art with its muse. Some spots are visible from a road. Others require hiking on trails for hours under a blazing sun to return to the destination he depicted. “I love bringing everything I’ve internalized through my painting process back to where it was born from,” Chamberlain said.

 

CHAMBERLAIN WAS always a child of the desert. He grew up in the small town of Cedar Fort, spending those formative years rooting around the hills, chasing lizards and falling in love with the silence and solitude of the West Desert.

He started out using crayons, pens and pencils at age three, and his parents – accomplished artists in their own right – encouraged his artistic nature. Art was his first language, and Chamberlain would often find himself scolded in grade school for doodling.

He eventually graduated from crayon scribbles to earn a bachelor’s degree in painting from Utah Valley University. Shortly after college, he began working for the U.S. Forest Service and later returned to school for a master’s degree in anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology, further uniting his desire to understand the landscapes, people and culture of       his home.

This dual life of ranger and artist allowed Chamberlain to incorporate his naturalist expertise into educating people through art. As a lifelong advocate for public lands, he adamantly believes art is an entry point to stewardship. “I want to expose people who might not normally be exposed to wilderness ... get it into their psyche and get them attached to the land,” he said. “You can’t protect something you don’t love.”

It wasn’t until 2008 that he began to see art as a viable career. Yet despite being a professional painter for the last decade, Chamberlain still supplements his studio work with employment for the Forest Service, where he works on Northern Utah’s 2.2 million-acre Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, one of the busiest forests in the U.S.

This unique experience allows him to live in constant conversation with the land and the public that uses it. “We live in a paradise where I can slap on my boots, grab my easel, some paintbrushes and head right out to the desert,” he reflected. “No permission, no gates. Utah is special that way. Nowhere else in the world is    like this.”

 

WHILE HIS ranger job takes him to the pine forests of the Wasatch, Chamberlain’s heart will forever lie in the desert. His paintings frequently blend mauve, sunbaked orange and camel tones, and feature motifs such as weathered animal skulls, ancient rock art panels and junipers, a tree he has a deep affinity for.

“Some people have spirit animals. I guess mine’s a tree,” he laughed. “They’re fighters, those junipers. Their roots drilled through rock, twisted, gnarled, but alive. It sums up Utah’s desert perfectly.” His love affair with junipers can be found splayed across his canvases, from the large oil painting titled “Juniper Sky” to mixed media works.

Chamberlain also values the human connection his art has built upon. While guiding a family in Bears Ears National Monument, they stumbled upon a rock art panel deep in the backcountry. A parade of prehistoric petroglyphs – bighorn sheep, human figures and geometric shapes – march across the chiseled sandstone.

The discovery moved the group so deeply that they later commissioned Chamberlain to document the memory in an oil painting titled “Procession.” The artwork won an award in the Utah Division of Arts & Museums Statewide Annual Exhibition, catching the attention of the State of Utah, which purchased photo rights to the private commission.

In 2023, the State of Utah then commissioned Chamberlain to create “Hidden Valley,” depicting another rock art panel in southern Utah and preserving a cultural and institutional record of the state for its permanent art collection. For the artist whose life’s work is rooted in stewardship, this honor mirrored his mission. The places he loves would be formally enshrined in the state’s Art collection.

The canvas can be found in the Governor’s Office of Economics in Salt Lake City, while the remainder of Chamberlain’s artwork is showcased online at codychamberlainart.com, in frequent galleries and at TWIG Media Lab in Salt Lake City in 2027.

But if you’re looking for the heart of his work, he’ll point you away from the frame. “Just head out into the desert and find a juniper,” Chamberlain said. “That’s the real art.”