Stephen C. Elliott was born on July 23, 1943 in Des Moines, Iowa. His father went to the University of Iowa and trained with Grant Wood. Steve started painting when he was about two years old with his father. His father worked with Meredith Publishing Company in Des Moines, Iowa and where he contracted with Ding Darling and Maynard Reece. Later his father went into advertising where he created Modern Maturity, National Wildlife and Ranger Rick.

Stephen attended grade school in Iowa and then moved to Philadelphia with his family where he finished grade school. High school included Chicago, Notre Dame High School in Niles, Illinois, and Marquette High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At Marquette University in Milwaukee, he got a B.A. in English and premedicine. From there he went to medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

One year of surgical internship and general surgery was in Denver in 1969. His military service was as a Lieutenant Commander with the Public Health Service in Browning, Montana for two years. He then went to the Emergency room at the Deaconess Hospital in Great Falls and then on to Billings for about sixteen years at St. Vincent's Hospital Emergency Department.

During his medical career, Stephen was painting as well but primarily in the medium of watercolor. For several years in the late 1970's, he placed in the top fifty submissions of the Federal Duck Stamp competition. To date in his career, he has had two works included in the top one hundred of the Arts In The Park exhibition. Stephen moved to Loveland, Colorado in 1988 and began painting full time.

His primary medium has been from that point in oil. Over his career, some would often feel that possibly Steve was at a career pinnacle between medicine and his potential in art. That was not so and as Steve points out, "I gave twenty years to medicine and now I going to give the rest of my life to art." He still enjoys medicine on an intellectual level rather than the toil of the career on a physical level. "Art is a language and it differs from spoken language in that it is received by the brain. In art you produce the image and the brain creates the words. Art communicates from an entirely different place. I seriously paint for me."