Jill McLennan

Jill McLennan explores and observes the city of Oakland, a city she has chosen to call home. She delves into the industrial history, researching historical photographs and learning the stories of this vibrant city, built on wetlands of the bay.  

  In her work, she explores the cycles of the natural world through change, motion and balance. Depicting people and animals migrating towards undetermined outcomes and people living on the streets of Oakland, she expresses our common humanity, need for community and will to survive. Through a variety of mediums, McLennan works and reworks these images creating intimate narratives of nature’s reckoning and humanity’s challenge to stay afloat. 

      Jill McLennan is a professional painter and teaching artist living in the Bay Area for 24+ years.  She organizes community projects with her neighborhood, Jingletown Arts, Businesses & Community and creates public art that reflects the local history of a place.  She is a long standing member of Mercury 20 Gallery in the heart of the Art Murmur district of Oakland. McLennan draws, paints, prints, creating oil and water color paintings, mixed media collages and pursuing printmaking in Berkeley and Japan.