After retiring in the early 1970s, Carey painted full time for 25 years. In the late 1980s, his friend Michael Goodman, professor in architecture at U.C. Berkeley, designed a studio for him, charging $1. The studio was on Carey's wooded property in the Piedmont hills overlooking the San Francisco Bay. In the 1980s, Carey painted frequently with Lundy Siegriest, son of Society of Six member Lou Siegrist, and later with Terry St. John, a Bay Area artist who did much to re-establish the plein air style of painting that had featured so prominently in the region's artistic history.
100 paintings by Carey were given to San Francisco General Hospital in San Francisco in 2001. The donation was arranged by the non-profit Art for Healing
