Jo Ganter graduated with Fine Art MA (hons) from The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art in 1988.  In 1989/90, she was a Scholar at The British School of Rome. She returned to Scotland and continued her artistic career while teaching at Glasgow School of Art in the Departments of Printmaking and Historical and Critical Studies. In 1994, she received a Boise Scholarship, and Fellowship from the KALA Arts Institute, allowing her to travel and work in print studios in New York and California before joining the staff of ECA in 1995. In 2003, she was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy. Ganter has had many solo exhibitions, including A.I.R. Gallery in New York in 2000, The Talbot Rice Gallery in 2003, and Vilnius Academy, Lithuania in 2011. In 2014 she began collaborating with musicians to create graphic scores. These led to exhibitions at the Talbot Rice Gallery (2015); the Kleinert James Center for the Arts, Woodstock, NY; Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2019), Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvisation (2020).

Jo Ganter is Treasurer of the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture since 2023.

In 2011 she was artist-in-residence and Professor or Printmaking at University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Her work has been acquired by major collections, including The British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, the Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, New York Public Library, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, The Ashmolean in Oxford.