Elmer Turner was born in Wyoming, and in 1899 his family moved to Greeley, Colorado.  He served in the First World War as a second lieutenant, and there are some surveys and sketches from that period that show considerable academic influence.

By 1920, Turner was in Chicago studying at the Art Institute and with James E. Mcburney, a noted muralist. This is where Elmer met his wife and fellow artist, Ila McAfee. They were married in 1926 at the McAfee ranch in Colorado, with their mentor, James McBurney in attendance. He and the newlyweds then left, traveling together to work on a mural for the Los Angeles County Museum. On the way, they detoured through Taos, New Mexico, the famous art colony Ila had heard about from a friend. Immediately enchanted by Taos, they quickly met many artists, including Blanche Grant, Oscar Berninghaus, Ernest and Mary Blumenschein, Victor Higgins, and E. Martin Hennings, living in Taos then.

From Taos, they went to California, where they spent the winter working on the mural, as well as painting many seascapes and coastal landscape paintings. Soon after their return from California in the spring of 1927, Elmer achieved his first success, winning acclaim for a painting used on the cover of a major national news magazine. While the remainder of that year was spent working and painting in Colorado, in 1928 Elmer and Ila moved permanently to Taos.

Tragically, Turner's time painting in Taos was limited. Even though he lived well into his 70s, he was paralyzed by a neurological disorder ten years after moving to the area. For this reason, there are only a few hundred known paintings by Turner of this time period, and many of them are privately held, in museum collections, or recently released from the family estate.