Jackson Cheatham was born in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1945. After serving in the United States Navy, he attended the Atlanta College of Art (ACA, now the Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design), where he studied with Keith Rasmussen and Norman Wagner. He earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at ACA and a master of fine arts degree at the University of Georgia (UGA). He was the adjunct professor of printmaking at ACA; director of visual arts at the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center in Madison, Georgia; professor at UGA and at Augusta State University (now Augusta University), where he directed the Mary S. Byrd Gallery. Now retired, he continues to live and work in a home and studio he built himself in Thomson, Georgia.

His work has been the subject of many solo and group exhibitions throughout the region. His prints are included in the collections of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center; the Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum (now the LaGrange Art Museum); the Morris Museum of Art; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana.