Born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia, Boyd Carr earned a degree in aeronautic engineering from University of Virginia. He submitted five theses in his AE program before they finally accepted his 6th and graduated him after (he says) making him promise never to design an airplane. All 6 of those theses were created and submitted as cartoons, or what we now might call "graphic comics". After a stint in the Air Force, and an abrupt end to his career in the family optics business, Boyd went back to making art at the suggestion of his wife, Gloria.

His brilliant pen and ink drawings and pithy humorous captions won him a place as staff artist for the Ripley Arts and Crafts Fair of WV, The West Virginia Hillbilly, Appalachian Journal, the West Virginia Art News, the Episcopal Diocese of WV, and West Virginia Writers, Inc. During this time, he renewed his lifelong interest in serious art, and over the years created an abundance of work in many styles, including wood carvings and wire and cardboard sculpture. Beginning in the late 1970s and through the 1980's and 90's, Boyd travelled the states of Virginia and West Virginia sketching whatever caught his fancy, including many structures and places now vanished from the landscape.

Through all of this, Boyd worked for the past 40 years on what he called MY.TH (my thesis), which attempts to describe how a myth could be created in a literate culture. Heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell, this masterwork has morphed into a full blown attempt to describe how the myths of ancient cultures were developed as life instructions for a population without a written language, to guide them to an understanding of time and existence on this planet.

Boyd Carr recently lived in Bedford, Virginia near his hometown of Roanoke. Boyd, though legally blind, produced art, poetry and philosophy of a high order until his passing.

-Kirk Judd, poet and caretaker of Boyd Carr's artwork