Burt Procter was born in Gloucester, MA on June 24, 1901, Burt Procter was infatuated with the Wild West, and began drawing horses, cowboys and Indians as a small child. His family moved to Oak Park, IL in 1908 and he began his art studies at the Art Institute of Chicago.

At age 17 he went west to the Little Big Horn basin in Wyoming. He studied mining engineering at Stanford University and then worked for the Federal Government at the Grand Canyon. After his move to Pasadena in 1920, he worked as a commercial artist and further studied at Chouinard and Otis Art Institutes under Chamberlin and Lawrence Murphy.

He studied art with Harvey Dunn and Pruett Carter after moving to New York in the late 1920s. Procter was an art director there for an advertising agency for five years. In the 1930s he worked as a mining engineer throughout the West while in his leisure painting desert and western scenes.

In 1938 Procter married and settled in southern California. Summers were spent in Corona del Mar and winters in Palm Springs until his death on July 2, 1980.