About
Chris Peterson was born in Provo, Utah in 1975. He credits much of his formative life experience with his time growing up at the base of 
Timpanogos and exploring the wildest corners of the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin country. He began painting in his early 20s, while studying art at Brigham Young University.
He spent a season in New York City studying art and producing work for a solo exhibition in a SoHo gallery. He won a Merit Scholarship at Kansas City Art Institute, studying color and composition under the tutelage of Warren Rosser. During his early years of art-making from 1997-2002, Chris worked prolifically, producing hundreds of paintings and participating in more than a dozen solo exhibitions.
Upon graduating from BYU with a BFA in painting in 2002, Chris took a sabbatical from intensive art-making to pursue a hands-on education in civic involvement. He founded a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting environmental art-activism in the West. He began a Master’s program at the University of Utah focused upon nonprofit management and environmental policy. In 2003, he curated a group exhibition with some of Utah’s best-known artists at Art Access Gallery in Salt Lake City.
His nonprofit studies led him to become the Executive Director of Glen Canyon Institute, a nonprofit organization working to reform Western water policy on the Colorado River. In 2005, he received a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Utah and continued on to pursue another Master’s degree in Environmental Humanities, with an emphasis upon leadership development for grassroots leaders and modern environmental approaches.
Since then, he worked as Program Director for the Murie Center (a fledgling conservation think-tank in Moose, Wyoming). Worked as a multi-discplinary art specialist in Salt Lake Public Schools and a communications and strategy consultant for a startup technology-based charter school in Salt Lake City. He also worked as the international programs Director for Trivani Foundation on humanitarian rural development projects in East Africa and Asia.
In 2008, he c0-founded Great West Institute with Brooke Williams – a 501c3 think-tank focused upon empowering grassroots leaders and expanding conservation and community building. He continues work on community arts projects in Salt Lake City, including the ArtPark at Tracy Aviary, The Sorenson Unity Center Backyard ArtPark, and the State Street Mural Project. He’s facilitated murals in Moab, Uganda, Cambodia and the Greater Salt Lake Metropolitan Area.
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