Born in London, Ontario, Chambers' painting style shifted from surrealist-influenced to photo-realist-influenced.

Stan Brakhage proclaimed Chambers' The Hart of London as "one of the greatest films ever made.

[2] Chambers studied at Sir Adam Beck Collegiate Institute in London, where in 1944 he was taught by the painter Selwyn Dewdney.

Beal Secondary School and the University of Western Ontario, before spending eight years (1953–1961) studying and working in Europe.

While in Europe he met Pablo Picasso, turning up at the artist's house and scaling his gate in order to introduce himself.

[3] He called his own work "perceptual realism,"[4] a kind of surrealism based on his own dreams and memories and the existentialist philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Chambers called it "a faculty of inner vision where the object appears in the splendour of its essential namelessness.