The editors of Southwest Art Magazine listed Jill Carver as one of their ten ‘artists to watch’ nationwide in 2009. Originally from England, Jill Carver moved to Austin, Texas in 2002. Following a twelve-year career as a curatorial research assistant at the National Portrait Gallery in London, she took a year’s sabbatical to paint, during which she lived alone in a van in the South Island of New Zealand for four months - this experience confirmed her desire to paint full-time.

     Believing that one should ‘grow where one is planted’, she has been fast to establish herself in Texas where she has become well-known for her renderings of the Texas Hill Country and of the Big Bend Desert region. Further painting trips to Colorado, California, Wyoming, Idaho, Arizona and Utah have further extended her knowledge and love of the Western landscape. When not on the road traveling, she now divides her time between Austin, TX and Rico, CO.

     She has won many awards for her work in national juried shows, though 2008 and 2009 in particular have been confirmation of her standing as one of the ablest plein air painters today. The Art Academy Museum in Easton, Maryland, has purchased two of her paintings for its permanent collection. In 2009 she was invited as guest artist at the prestigious Maynard Dixon Country event in Utah,. She was also invited this year to the Laguna Beach Invitational where she won “Artists’ Choice for Best in Show.”