Carter studied at the Cleveland (Ohio) Museum School of Art from 1923 to 1927, and then traveled in Europe and North Africa for a year before studying a summer with Hans Hoffman in Capri. He taught at the Cleveland Museum school from 1930 to 1937, and then at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1938 to 1944. Carter then spend a period doing free-lance commercial art projects in addition to his painting before returning to the academic sphere in 1961, as artist-in-residence at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, where he remain until 1969.
Carter's work of the 1930s and 1940s was essentially realistic, taking its subjects from the rural people and events of his youthful experience living on a farm, but this work had an imaginative, mysterious, and meditative cast, which of itself became the dominate theme of his later work. Among works of this period are murals Early Ravenna, 1936, and, in four panels, Characteristic Local Scenes in Portsmouth, 1938, for the post offices of Ravenna, Ohio, and his home town, respectively.
In the 1960s Carter turned to severe geometric simplification in conjunction with his highly developed illusionistic style. He "Over and Above" series featured realistic depictions of animals posed above blank walls; "Transections" were architectural interiors reduced to simple geometrics accented by transparent oval shapes that resemble heads. The ovoid shapes continue as a theme throughout much of his later work.
Carter exhibited at Ferargil Galleries in the 1930s and 1940s. He has made his home in New Jersey since 1948; a retrospective exhibition of his work was presented by the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, in 1974.
Carter is a member of the Academy in the watercolorist classification. In the annual exhibition of 1989 he was presented the Mikhail and Ekateryna Shatalov Award which is given for "a romantic realist landscape executed in a free manner."