Pike studied with Charles Hawthorne and Richard Miller in Provincetown (1929-31). In 1933 he went to Jamaica where he painted and worked as a commercial artist. There he married Zellah Howe Washburn in 1935. Pike returned to the United States in 1938.
During World War II Pike recorded the U.S. occupation of Korea for the Combat Art Section. These works are now in the Historical Properties Section, War Department, Washington, DC.
After his term in the service, Pike settled in Woodstock where he purchased a home in 1945. Pike taught at the Art Students League summer school in Woodstock, and was represented by Ferargil Galleries and Grand Central Art Galleries in New York. In the 1950s he was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force Academy to do paintings in France and Germany (1954); in Thule, Greenland (1955); in Ecuador, Columbia and Central America (1956); and in Formosa and Japan (1958). These works are at the Historical Museum in Colorado Springs. In 1966 Watson-Guptill published his book Watercolor.
Pike's watercolors are atmospheric and often feature weather effects such as mist or rain. His subjects include rural outdoor scenes of barnyards and stables, sportsmen and hunters, streams, landscapes and street scenes. He had a journalistic sense which made his work commercially successful in the fields of advertising and magazine illustration.
