According to the U.S. Census of 1900, he resided with his parents, two sisters and five brothers in Prairie Grove, Washington County, Arkansas; his Alabama-born father was employed as a carpenter.

[3] Edgar's occupation was listed as “carpenter, apprentice.” Leaving home on several occasions, Payne painted houses, signs, portraits, murals, and local theater stage sets, to pay his way.

Struggling at first, he soon exhibited a group of landscape works, painted on a small easel, at the Palette and Chisel Club.[when?]

On the morning of their wedding day about a year later, 9 November 1912, Edgar noticed that the light was "perfect", and had Elsie postpone the ceremony until the afternoon.

Between 1915 and 1918-19 Edgar maintained a professional address in Chicago at the Tree Studio Building on East Ohio Street.

Although he painted in Europe, he is most remembered for his work from the Four Corners area of the Navajo Nation Reservation, Yosemite, and the California coast.

The Santa Fe Railroad commissions were the turn of the century brainchild of William H. Simpson, chief of the railway's advertising department.

This endeavor lasted for decades and made the Santa Fe one of the largest collectors of southwestern fine art.

Payne rented a warehouse in Glendale, California and hired other artists, including Elsie, to help complete the work.

They spent the next four years painting their way through the southwest, in places like Canadian Rockies in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, and then exhibiting in the Los Angeles area.

Sometimes their trips would involve hiking into the backcountry, looking for undisturbed places of raw and rare beauty to paint, sometimes for weeks.

His favorite place in Europe was the Alps, where he painted the Great White Peak of Mont Blanc, which the Paris Salon gave "an honorable mention" in spring 1923.

[citation needed] Upon returning the U.S. in the fall of 1924, the Paynes first stayed in Chicago, then went back to Laguna Beach, and then to New York City in 1926.

After the financial collapse of 1929, and the subsequent Great Depression, commissions didn't come as easily, so the Paynes returned to Southern California on a more permanent basis, purchasing a new Los Angeles, studio-home, in 1932.

However, he would spend a great deal of his time in the California Sierra Nevada Mountains, painting his favorite subject.