[3] His parents were Verna Zay (née Westfall) and James William Ferren, his father served in the Army and the family moved often.
[6] Although for the most part not formally educated, preferring to develop his art through an adventurous life style, and interaction with other artists, he was known as an intellectual among his peers.
While in Paris, Ferren was part of the community of artists working in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, including Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Hans Hofmann, Joaquín Torres-García, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso.
[9] He worked at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter, and learned about a nineteenth-century printing technique, the engraving plate is imprinted in wet plaster, and when dried, is then carved and painted.
He was a founding member (and later president) of The Club, a group of artists who were at the heart of the emerging New York School of abstract expressionism.
[15] Ferren was selected as the first US State Department's Artist in Residence, and spent one year ('63–'64) in Beirut, Lebanon with his family.
[17] Ferren, along with friend and fellow painter Willem de Kooning, purchased adjacent land and a house, to which he added a studio, from sculptor Wilfred Zogbaum in 1959.
[18] A few years after returning from Beirut, the Ferrens moved from New York City to live and paint full-time in East Hampton, however he also maintained a studio in New York at 147 Spring Street (sharing the building with Robert Wilson's Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds),[19] as he was simultaneously a professor teaching color and painting, and serving as chairman of the art department for CUNY, Queens College.
[20] This was a very prolific period for them both, and the Ferren's remained active members of the East Hampton artist community, for the remainder of their lives.