Born in Denver, Colorado and raised primarily in California, Samuel Bolton Colburn earned a degree in Geology in 1932 from the University of Southern California. He spent the following year studying art in Europe. Colburn continued his art education in Los Angeles at the Chouinard Art Institute where he met fellow students, Millard Sheets and Phil Dike. He relocated to Carmel, California in 1937 and worked primarily in watercolors painting in a Regionalist/American Scene style with a modernist approach. He was active in the Monterey Peninsula artist community where he created murals, taught classes and exhibited regularly in local galleries. Solo exhibitions were held in Tucson, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, San Francisco and New York.