"The desert and its painters are forever intertwined. Each complements the other. What has the desert said to the painters and what have they said in return."

— Ed Ainsworth

From earliest times, the landscape of southern Utah has had the power to awe, inspire, even intimidate its viewers.

The natural forces that turned rock red, froze sand for the eternities, washed and blew away stone in intricate patterns, created a region unlike any other.

It is not surprising that over the past few centuries, this area has attracted artists of all ages, styles and genres, who have labored to capture the magic with paint and on canvas. What might be surprising is that until now, the artistic history of Utah's canyons and deserts has really not been told.

"The history of southern Utah art has not been brought together. There have only been bits and pieces," says Donna L. Poulton, co-author with Vern Swanson of a book, "Painters of Utah's Canyons And Deserts" (Gibbs Smith, $75), which now gives this region a voice.

"When Gibbs Smith came to us with the idea, we jumped at the chance," says Poulton, who is also an assistant curator of Utah and Western art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah. "It's not often that you get a region to write about that has never been done. You get to start with a completely new perspective."

It was a good team, says Swanson, who is also director of the Springville Art Museum. "We're both so enamored with Utah art."

The two spent a lot of time in southern Utah visiting private homes, galleries, museums, "everywhere we could find art," Poulton says. "We searched the Internet, auction records, exhibition catalogs. We talked with dozens, if not hundreds, of gallery owners and museum curators."

What was supposed to be a two-year project turned into three years. "We begged for another year," Swanson says, "and that extra year meant we could round it into perfection, meant that we could get to the bedrock of the red rock."

That's not to say they might have missed an artist or two, he says, "but if we did, it's not many and it's not a famous one."

What they did with this book that makes it unique, he says, is approach it like it was a biography. "If you are writing the story of one artist, you would begin with a 'catalogue raissone,' a list of everything that artist has done. Then you can see how his style changed, how his work improved, what he has done. Then when you go to write the biography, it's half-written already, if you've done it right."