By age 4, Carol Peek was entertaining her brother with her drawing ability. Page after page of her diary was filled with pictures of horses. By age 14, when she got her first filly, the relationship between artist and subject was cemented. She majored in art at Terra Linda High School and used her babysitting proceeds to stable her horse at a neighbor's barn.

Peek went on to study art at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Berkeley, spending her summers working at a dude ranch in Lake Tahoe. Next she enrolled at the Art Center School of Design in Pasadena. Her teachers have included John Asaro, George Carlson, Michael Lynch and Dan McCaw.

Following her training, she put in a year as an illustrator for Hallmark Cards, an experience she describes as a "paid extension of school." In 1988 she returned to Petaluma, where she continues to fill her diary with paintings of California ranch life bathed in fleeting passages of light.