Painter, printmaker, and educator Everett Spruce was born Everett Franklin Spruce on December 25, 1908, in Holland, Arkansas. Born the first of six children to migrant farmers, he learned how to work the land as a child and teenager. This helped foster a love of nature and the landscapes of Arkansas, where his family grew fruit trees, and North Carolina, where they grew cotton and corn. He began sketching these landscapes in his spare time, proving to be a skilled artist despite little to no training by the time he reached high school. Around 1924 he was introduced to Kathryne and Otis Travis, founders of the Dallas Art Institute (DAI), the first formal art institution in the Southern United States. Impressed with his work, the Travises encouraged him to enroll in the institute once he'd graduated in 1926. He did so, moving to Dallas that year despite his father's disapproval.

His time at the DAI proved invaluable, offering him exposure to work he would not have otherwise seen without traveling to more established art meccas such as New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. At the DAI he studied under Thomas Stell, who exposed him to a wide range of genres ranging from the Old Master era to contemporary, including European Modernists such as Matisse and Cezanne. Combined with his exposure to Southwestern artists and aesthetics, Spruce's style would become synonymous with Texas Modernism. He found great inspiration in the works of Italian Masters Bellini and Quattrocentro, as well as Surrealism. In combination with his Methodist belief in stewardship of the earth, Spruce's work found purchase in the spiritual crux of these aesthetics. He rarely depicted people and, unlike many of his Depression-era contemporaries, did not pursue social realism.

In 1931, Spruce was able to secure a position at the relatively new Dallas Public Art Gallery, which would go on to become the Dallas Museum of Art. By 1936 he was promoted to assistant director, and he began teaching at the museum as well. He actively promoted contemporary art and artists of Dallas, and of Texas in general, and his first participation in a major exhibition was with a group of nine painters titled "Exhibition of Young Dallas Painters", which took place at the Dallas Public Art Gallery in 1932. This led to the founding of the Dallas Nine, an association of Dallas-based artists. He helped found the Lone Star Printmakers in 1938, which placed modern Texas printmaking on the map, and the group continued to exhibit until 1942, when the ongoing war efforts displaced many of the artists, whether due to enlistement or because jobs in the art realm were more readily found elsewhere.

In 1940 Spruce began teaching in the art department at the University of Texas at Austin. He would remain there until 1974, serving as Chairman of the department from 1949 to 1951 and then as director of the Graduate Studio Art program from 1954 until his retirement. Throughout his teaching career and beyond, he continued to work on and exhibit his art throughout the U.S., including at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and many more. 

Everett Spruce continued to paint until he was eighty-eight years old. He died in Austin, Texas, on October 18, 2002. His efforts to promote Texas printmakers and, more generally, Texas Modernism remains an integral part of his legacy.