Educated at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, Gary Carter graduated with honors in 1971, and began his fine art career in 1973 with a sellout one-man show in Tucson.

In 1982 he was accepted as a member of the CAA and in 1986, he served as the organization’s president. Carter paints the contemporary and historic American West, from mountain men and Indians to today’s cowboys, “and if you’re painting something they don’t think is right,” he says of his cowboy subjects, “they’re going to tell you.”

On June 25, 1991 (Custer’s anniversary), Gary was adopted by the Crow Tribe and the Real Bird Family. He is a member of the Big Lodge Clan and his name is “Eagle Man.” This adoption took place on the Crow reservation at a pow-wow and feast at Medicine Tail Coulee on the redesignated Little Big Horn Battlefield near Hardin, Montana.

Gary Carter lives in Montana near the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park with his wife, Marlys. A few miles away is Sun Ranch, where Carter lived and worked in the bunkhouse studio: there he gained an intensive education and precious insight into the world of the cowboy.