Eric Elliott grew up in Alaska and moved to Grand Junction from Seattle, Washington. He mainly teaches painting classes, but also teaches figure drawing, foundation drawing and 2D Design. For Elliott, teaching art is all about exposure and exploration. In order to expand and grow as artists, students need to be exposed to the principles of art, art history, contemporary approaches to art making, and subjects outside the realm of art. Then through exploration, every art student must find the marks, colors, forms and subjects that best express what is important to them so that they can then find their own voice as an artist.
As an artist, Elliott primarily works in oil paint, charcoal and ink. In his work, he uses the objects that surround him as a point of departure and their structures become frameworks upon which he can play with explorations of paint, form, association, space, light, atmosphere, unification and dissolution.
In 2020, Elliott received a Colorado Department of Education OER grant. He completed a year-long art residency at the Jerusalem Studio School, Israel in 2014. He was the 2009 winner of the Behnke Foundation's Neddy Artist Fellowship, received the Seattle Art Museum's 2008 Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award and was in the 2009 Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum. He is represented by Dwell Fine Art in Virginia.