He lived in poverty as a child and young man, yet in the mid-1950s built the Archie Teater Studio, the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in the state of Idaho, and spent much of the last 20 years of his life traveling and painting in more than 100 countries, crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth on one occasion, and on the Concord on another.
And he could well have been the most prolific U.S. artist ever, with paintings numbering in the thousands that range from raw turn-of-the-century logging and mining camps in the West, to the majestic grandeur of the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming, street scenes in cowboy and mining towns, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Central Park in New York, the San Francisco skyline, exotic markets in North Africa, the Near East and Asia, plus what at the time he painted it was acclaimed to be the only historically accurate rendition of Custer's Last Stand.
Their first winters after marriage were spent in New York City, where they lived in Greenwich Village and studied at the Art Students League, with Patricia taking sculpture lessons from William Zorach.
Despite having, after the late-1950s, a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright on a bluff overlooking the Snake River near Hagerman, Idaho, the Teaters only real constant in terms of residence was the summers spent in Jackson Hole.
Following his death, Teater's paintings seemed to be largely known only by the owners his work and the diminishing coterie of people predominately in Boise, Idaho, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming who personally knew him or his wife.
With his brothers, he built a corral in the Snake River to catch sturgeon that they could sell as food to mining companies for their crews.
In the mid-1920s, he spent summers trekking with a string of pack burros through the Sawtooth Mountains prospecting for gold, sketching, and painting.
This visit initiated a lifelong love affair with the Tetons, and he spent, for the rest of his life, virtually every summer thereafter in Jackson Hole.
Teater accordingly left Idaho for New York City in September 1935 and began the first of what would eventually become eight winters of study at the Art Students League (1935–37, 1942–45, and 1956).
His patron saint enabling him to do was Frances (Mrs. Charles) de Rham, who lived on Park Avenue and had a ranch in Jackson Hole where she spent summers.
His instructors at the Art Students League between 1935 and 1945 included Homer Boss (1882–1956), Alexander Brook (1898–1980), George Brandt Bridgman (1865–1943), John Carroll (1892–1959), Frank Vincent Dumond (1865–1951), Reginald Marsh (1898–1954), and William C. McNulty (1884–1963).
His final formal study at the Art Students League was in early 1956, when he sat for four life classes from Edwin Dickensen (1891–1971), Ivan Olinsky (1878–1962), and Robert Philipp (1895–1981).
[4] His subject matter was broad and included portraits, still lifes, nudes, animals, landscapes, coasts and seashores, cowboy and mining towns, city street scenes, barrooms and dance halls, mining and logging camps, range life, humor, fantasy and autobiography, natural, social and military history, and social commentary.
He may have written a few poems, and in addition left an unpublished novel that is an allegory of a couple of years of family life when he was a teenager living along the Snake River.