Frutteto d' oliva oil on linen 34" X 48"

Marsh Grass I  Oil on Panel 24" x 40""

Napa Vineyard Oil on Panel 32"X24"

Sonoma Autumn Oil on Panel 32"X24"

With these pieces, I’m attempting to evoke the mood of the landscape; sometimes mysterious, sometimes reliably sunny. In painting plein air, finding the view to paint can be as important and time consuming as actually painting it. It’s often difficult to find one view that has all of the elements one is looking for. Many of my paintings were painted plein-air from a single view with not much editing. That said, it is left to the artist to find the magic of a specific view and magnify it, as the landscape can seem mundane, illusive, or phenomenal. These pieces are about the feeling of brilliant light on a clear day, everything still and quiet, and the lushness of flora. The trees always growing upward and outward, the light streaming across the landscape; everything as it should be.

The plaster surfaces are often crackled and sanded to insinuate age; as the landscape, however changed over the years, has been around longer than any images of it. Some of my pieces also utilize gold leaf and pattern, either within the image or on a border or side panel. Stamped ferns and leaves often reflect nature as a close up view of some of the flora within the image. Brocade patterns echo the growth of plants, up to the sky.

Jill Schultz McGannon earned her BFA and MFA in Drawing and Painting at the University of Georgia, and later attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  She paints realistic landscape, figure, and still life paintings in oils, preferring to work from life whenever possible.  Following the classical approach of the Nineteenth century Naturalist artists, Ms. McGannon paints smaller landscapes plein-air, usually spending a month or two in Europe as well as time in north Georgia and on the Georgia coast.  She began painting plein-air from the hilltops surrounding Cortona, Italy in 1994 when she was Artist in Residence for the University of Georgia's painting program in Cortona.  Larger works are executed back home in the studio, using the small paintings and photographs as resources.  Ms.  McGannon's most recent body of work brings pattern and texture into the equation in the form of decorative borders, crackled varnish, and Venetian plaster surfaces.