Locke was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied at the Ohio Mechanics Institute, the Cincinnati Art Academy, and later at the Art Students League of New York with Joseph Pennell. He later travelled to Europe and studied in Paris in 1928.

Both a painter and a printmaker, Locke taught at the Arts Students League in the mid thirties. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Design. He has received awards from the Tiffany Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Logan Prize of the Art Institute of Chicago.

His work is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Corcoran Gallery and the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC