From education to employment

Award Winning artist joins Guildford College to deliver art workshops for adults

Guildford College is delighted to welcome artist Jill Iliffe to their Creative Industries faculty based at their Stoke Road campus.  

Jill will be delivering workshops through the college’s Learning for Leisure Summer programme, ‘I Wish I Could…’, in July, based in the college’s dedicated art studio on campus. Jill is initially delivering three workshops:  

  • I Wish I Could Draw – Monday 12 July 2021, 10am – 3pm 
  • I Wish I Could Paint with Watercolour – Wednesday 14 July 2021, 10am – 3pm
  •  I Wish I Could Paint with Oils – Thursday 15 July 2021, 10am – 3pm 

Jill comes with a wealth of experience and success in the art world. Having appeared as a contestant on last year’s Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year, exhibiting and selling her work in galleries across the country. As well as having a long and successful career in adult education behind her, Jill joins Activate Learning at Guildford College with plans to extend her classes to Merrist Wood College, over the coming months. 

Having grown up in South London, art has always been at the centre of Jill’s life. Her father was a commercial artist and was surrounded by art materials from the start!  

Having completed her A Levels and Art Foundation, Jill took a job at Croydon College teaching Business Administration and IT, whilst still pursuing her artistic interests as a sideline.  

This led to a long relationship with Merton Adult Education, where Jill became Head of Creative Arts delivering art classes whilst studying for her BA in Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art, where she won the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation award which funded her MA in Drawing. All this whilst simultaneously bringing up a family!  

She was eventually promoted to Head of Adult Education but missed her artistic roots and made the decision to become a full-time artist in 2018, making the move to Hampshire earlier this year. Since becoming a full-time artist Jill has had much success selling private commissions created in her home studio and displaying and selling her work through various galleries around the country.  

But she really missed her passion – teaching art to adults.  Jill is therefore delighted to be joining the Creative Industries team at Guildford College and is very much looking forward to delivering her first programme in July. 

Jill said: “I can teach anyone to draw or paint and I like to promote a relaxed environment where people have the freedom to explore their artistic skills, whatever level they are at. I love to see how people progress – they are usually surprised at what they can achieve in a relatively short space of time.” 


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