Jill McGannon completed her BFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Georgia in 1985 and earned her MFA in 1988, also from UGA, and has made a living as an artist since then. She was a student on the UGA Studies Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy in 1982, and used her photos of Italy to paint murals in Italian restaurants in Chicago for the 8 years she lived in Chicago. She also showed her figurative paintings at Addington Gallery. Jill began painting plein air in 1994 when she returned to Cortona as Artist in Residence for the UGA program, and has continued to paint plein air, primarily in Italy, the GA and SC coast, and the GA and NC mountains. Jill has been painting the marsh in the Hilton Head Island, SC area since the early 80s, when her family bought a condo there, and has been primarily doing paintings of the marsh and the low country since 2010. She is happy to be showing her coastal paintings at Four Corners Gallery in Bluffton, SC. She also loves painting the mountains in Blue Ridge, GA, and is now showing at High Country Art in Blue Ridge. She lives in the Atlanta area and shows her large work in Atlanta at Mason Fine Art. The smaller plein air works are often used as references to paint larger paintings in the studio.
