Scott McNeill was born in Washington DC. He grew up on the east coast, and graduated from Clemson University in 1991. After college, Scott joined the Peace Corps.  His assignment led him to Valle de Angeles, Honduras, a Central American artisan village that specializes in woodcraft and ornate relief woodcarving.  His job, working as a consultant to  the National Association of Honduran Artists (A.N.A.H.).  For the next two years, Scott worked closely with hundreds of artisans on many projects, he was welcomed into their workshops and community as if he had lived there his whole life.

When his Peace Corps service ended, Scott was invited to apprentice relief woodcarving in the workshop of a renowned master Honduran woodcarver. McNeill stayed and immersed himself into everything relief woodcarving related.  He learned quickly.  Scott soon began painting his relief woodcarvings, and the town's artisans recognized him for having 'una gracia'. 

After four and a half years abroad, Scott returned to the United States.  Right away, his painted woodcarvings took a big creative leap forward. McNeill began painting a different composition of imagery on top of the carved forms.  Seventeen years later, Scott McNeill’s multiple dimensional, painted relief sculptures stand out as a unique new form of visual expression.

In 2001 he was the inaugural recipient of the Dexter Jones Award, the ‘National Sculptors Award’ for outstanding bas-relief sculpture, from The National Sculpture Society, NYC.  In 2003 he was awarded an artist assistance grant from The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, followed by a grant in 2004 from The Artists' Fellowship Inc., NYC.  McNeill has exhibited in three solo museum shows along with several group shows, art centers and galleries. His multiple dimensional painted sculptures are in private collections in the United States and abroad. Scott currently works out of his home studio in Tempe, Ariz.