Scott Erickson is a touring painter, author, and performance speaker known for Honest Advent and Say Yes. Discover his age, wife, career, books, and artistic journey.
Scott Erickson — also known as Scott the Painter — is one of the most distinctive voices at the intersection of faith, art, and storytelling in the contemporary Christian creative world. Based in Vancouver, Washington, he has built a reputation as a touring painter, performance speaker, and author whose work blends autobiography, mythology, and visual aesthetics to create experiences that resonate at a deeply human level.
His art has appeared on CNN, in National Geographic, and across magazines, newspaper outlets, and book covers worldwide. What sets Scott apart from traditional artists or speakers is his refusal to separate the personal from the professional. His books, one-man shows, and paintings all draw from his own lived experiences — including ministry burnout and clinical depression — and transform them into something universally meaningful.
Over a career spanning more than a decade, he has become a beloved figure in spiritual formation circles, a published author with multiple bestselling titles, and a Spiritual Director to men and women navigating their own inner journeys.
Key Highlights About Scott Erickson
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Scott Erickson |
| Profession | Artist, Author, Performance Speaker, Spiritual Director |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Western Washington University (Art Teacher Education) |
| Wife | Holly Erickson |
| Children | Anders, Elsa, and Jones |
| Based In | Vancouver, Washington |
| Known For | Honest Advent, Say Yes, touring painter, performance art |
| Media Features | CNN, National Geographic, various magazines and newspapers |
| Website | scottericksonart.com |
Early Life and Education
Scott Erickson grew up in Seattle, Washington, where his creative instincts took root early. He pursued formal art training at Western Washington University, where he studied Art Teacher Education — a background that would later shape both how he creates and how he communicates his work to audiences. He also pursued biblical studies internationally, studying at Taurenhof in Austria and Capernwray Hall in England, experiences that deepened the spiritual and theological dimensions woven throughout his art.
This blend of formal art education and immersive biblical study gave Scott a rare dual fluency — he speaks the language of aesthetics as fluently as he speaks the language of scripture. That combination became the defining quality of his creative identity and the foundation for everything he would go on to build as an artist, speaker, and author.
Artist in Residence and Early Career
Before launching his independent career, Scott served as Artist in Residence at Ecclesia Church, a role that grounded his practice in community and spiritual context. This period was foundational: it gave him a live audience for his developing ideas about art as a tool for spiritual excavation, and it sharpened his understanding of how visual storytelling could open doors to honest conversations that words alone cannot reach.
He also worked as a User Experience Designer and designer at Sincerely Truman, demonstrating a versatility that extended beyond traditional fine art. These early professional experiences reinforced his instinct for communication — not just what art looks like, but how it functions for the person encountering it. By the time he stepped into full-time touring work, Scott had already developed a distinctive philosophy: that the best question to ask about a piece of art is not only “what does it mean?” but “what is it pulling out of you?”
Touring Painter and Performance Shows
Scott’s career as a touring painter and performance speaker brought his work into churches, universities, conferences, and arts venues across the country. As a presenter, he combines live painting, story-teaching, video curation, and humor into events designed to be as visually dynamic as they are emotionally resonant — his own description of his goal being to create something for his “A.D.D. brothers and sisters out there.”
His first major one-man show, “We Are Not Troubled Guests”, drew directly from his experience of professional burnout and clinical depression. The performance piece navigates what Scott describes as the surprising gift of an existential crisis, using live painting and storytelling to trace his journey through and beyond the collapse of a carefully constructed professional identity.
The show resonated deeply with audiences and established Scott as a performer willing to go to uncomfortably honest places in front of a crowd. His second touring show, “Say Yes: A Liturgy of Not Giving Up on Yourself”, built on that foundation with a focus on dreams, failure, and the voice of giving up that many people quietly live with. Juxtaposing humor, participation, and image curation, the show became a popular fixture on the Christian arts and conference circuit before being published as a book.
Scott also created “Stations in the Street”, an open-share Stations of the Cross street art project that was used by faith communities worldwide and featured in Tyler Perry’s Passion Live on Fox Television.
Books and Publications
Scott Erickson is the author and co-author of several acclaimed titles that combine visual art with spiritual reflection.
Prayer: Forty Days of Practice (co-authored with Justin McRoberts) is a story-driven 40-day prayer guide that invites readers to reconnect with God through creative and organic engagement. Its follow-up, May It Be So: Forty Days with the Lord’s Prayer, extends the same format using the familiar refrains of the Lord’s Prayer as a contemplative framework.
Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-With-Us Then, Here, and Now is his best-selling solo debut, a visually rich exploration of the Advent season that seeks to illuminate the truth that God shows up in the hardest parts of human experience. The book arrived with a corresponding art show, deepening its reach beyond the printed page. Say Yes: Discover the Surprising Life Beyond the Death of a Dream (published January 2022 by Zondervan) emerged directly from his second touring show and serves as an illuminated manuscript guiding readers through the death of a dream toward the life waiting on the other side.
Scott and co-author Justin McRoberts also created a collection of contemplative word-and-image prayers for seasons of depression, born out of their own experiences of gathering poems, images, and songs to carry them through difficult periods.
Personal Life: Wife Holly and Family
Scott Erickson is married to Holly Erickson, whom he affectionately describes as his “food blogging wife” — a running joke across his author bios, where Scott identifies himself as “her professional dishwasher.” The warmth and self-deprecating humor of that description says something genuine about both the man and the marriage.
The couple have three children together: Anders, Elsa, and Jones. The family has lived in several cities over the years, including Portland, Oregon, Austin, Texas, and currently Vancouver, Washington. Scott describes himself as someone most loved by his wife and children — a framing that reflects a deliberate choice to anchor his identity in relationship rather than achievement, even as his professional profile has grown considerably.
Spiritual Direction and Philosophy
Beyond painting and performance, Scott is a trained and practicing Spiritual Director — a contemplative companion role in which he walks alongside men and women in their inner lives and faith journeys. This work reflects the deeper current running beneath all of his art: a genuine conviction that creativity is not merely expressive but excavating, helping people get in touch with the honest truths they carry. His philosophy of art resists both the decorative and the didactic.
For Scott, a piece of art earns its place when it pulls something authentic out of the person encountering it — when it functions, as he has described, like hearing a song on the radio that feels like it was written specifically about your own life. This approach shapes everything from the one-man shows to the books to the paintings that travel with him on the road.
Final Thoughts
Scott Erickson occupies a genuinely rare position in the contemporary arts and faith world: an artist whose medium is not confined to canvas, stage, or page, but who moves fluidly between all three. His willingness to mine his own darkness — burnout, depression, shattered dreams — and return with something luminous for others is the quality that keeps audiences coming back and readers returning to his books.
His career is a sustained argument that honesty is the doorway to connection, and that beauty and vulnerability are not opposites but partners. Whether he is painting live in front of a crowd, writing a contemplative prayer guide, or sitting with someone as a Spiritual Director, Scott Erickson is doing the same essential thing: helping people see themselves and their lives more clearly. For anyone navigating their own seasons of doubt, loss, or reinvention, the work of Scott Erickson offers something increasingly rare — art that does not flinch.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: Who is Scott Erickson?
Scott Erickson is an American artist, author, touring painter, and performance speaker based in Vancouver, Washington. He is best known for his books Honest Advent and Say Yes, his live painting performances, and his one-man shows that blend storytelling, live art, and spiritual reflection.
Q2: What books has Scott Erickson written?
Scott Erickson is the author of Honest Advent, Say Yes: Discover the Surprising Life Beyond the Death of a Dream, and co-author of Prayer: Forty Days of Practice and May It Be So: Forty Days with the Lord’s Prayer, both written with Justin McRoberts. He has also contributed to a contemplative prayer collection for seasons of depression.
Q3: Who is Scott Erickson’s wife?
Scott Erickson’s wife is Holly Erickson, a food blogger whom Scott humorously credits as the reason he is “a professional dishwasher.” The couple have three children named Anders, Elsa, and Jones, and currently live in Vancouver, Washington.
Q4: Where did Scott Erickson study?
Scott Erickson studied Art Teacher Education at Western Washington University. He also pursued biblical studies at Taurenhof in Austria and Capernwray Hall in England, which deeply informed the spiritual and theological dimensions of his creative work.
Q5: What is Scott Erickson’s one-man show about?
His first show, We Are Not Troubled Guests, draws from his personal experience of ministry burnout and clinical depression, using live painting and storytelling to navigate an existential crisis. His second show, Say Yes, focuses on the death of a dream and the challenge of not giving up on oneself.
Q6: What is “Stations in the Street”?
Stations in the Street is an open-share Stations of the Cross street art project created by Scott Erickson. It was distributed to faith communities worldwide and was also used in Tyler Perry’s Passion Live broadcast on Fox Television.
Q7: What is Scott Erickson’s artistic philosophy?
Scott believes art functions best as an excavation tool — not simply something to admire, but something that helps people access honest truths about their own inner lives. He often says the most powerful question to ask of a piece of art is not “what does it mean?” but “what is it pulling out of you?”
