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Carl Ray was a Cree artist born on Sandy Lake First Nation in northern Ontario. He was sent to residential school in McIntosh at age eight, where he first showed artistic ability. After his father's death in 1956, Ray left school at age 15 to support his family, working as a hunter, trapper, logger, commercial fisherman, and gold miner. Despite early artistic promise, he initially avoided painting due to traditional taboos against depicting sacred Indigenous stories and legends.

Ray left Sandy Lake to work in the Red Lake gold mines, where he contracted tuberculosis. During his recovery at the Fort William sanatorium, he used painting as occupational therapy and returned to Sandy Lake in 1966. It was then that he encountered Norval Morrisseau, the founder of the Woodland School of Art, who encouraged Ray to break traditional taboos and paint Indigenous legends. Ray became Morrisseau's friend and apprentice, working with him on a large mural for the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. Though Morrisseau designed the mural, Ray completed much of the actual painting work.

Ray developed his own distinctive style within the Woodland School tradition, characterized by X-ray depictions showing internal organs and energy lines of animals and figures. He typically used a restricted palette of two or three colors, often brown, black, and blue, working in both ink and watercolors. His paintings frequently depicted dynamic relationships between humans, animals, and legendary creatures, often showing subjects in conflict with natural elements. Ray learned many of the Ojibwe legends he depicted from his grandfather, who was a respected medicine man in the Sandy Lake area.

Throughout the 1970s, Ray worked as both an artist and educator. He taught at the Manitou Arts Foundation on Schreiber Island in 1971 and participated in a Department of Indian Affairs-sponsored tour of northern communities and reserves in 1971-72. He also served as editor of Kitiwin, Sandy Lake First Nation's newspaper. Ray created illustrations for James Stevens' book "The Sacred Legends of the Sandy Lake Cree" (1971) and provided cover art for Tom Marshall's "The White City" (1976). In 1973, he became a founding member of the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc., also known as the Indian Group of Seven.

Ray's career was cut short when he died from stab wounds following a fight in Sioux Lookout in 1978 at age 35. His work is held in the collections of major Canadian institutions including the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and the National Gallery of Canada. Despite his brief career spanning roughly ten years of serious artistic production, Ray established himself as a significant figure in the Woodland School movement and Indigenous Canadian art.