Born in Greenville, Florida, Curtis Arnett moved with his parents in 1955 to Fort Pierce, Florida, where he attended elementary school at Lincoln Park Academy. After graduation from Dan McCarty High School, he served a two-year enlistment in the United States Marine Corps. A father of four and grandfather of five, Mr. Arnett still lives in Ft. Pierce.

Interested in art at an early age, Curtis began by drawing pictures of things in his environment. When he received a water color paint set from his mother one Christmas, he began to paint characters like Clark Kent and Lois Lane from his favorite comic books.

Curtis met renowned Florida artist A.E. Backus in the early 1960s and this encounter fed his interest in art even more. His attention was drawn to landscape painting when he became friends with and joined his neighbors, artist who would later become known as “The Highwaymen”.

By the age of seventeen, Curtis was selling his early work to businesses along major Florida highways. Back then, his coastal seascapes and scenes of moonlit rivers and plam trees sold for about $25 a painting. In the mid-1980s, he began to paint landscapes in Central Florida, and today, Curtis Arnett's paintings can be seen in banks, office buildings and private homes throughout Florida and the United States.