Barbara McCann

 

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                        1948 - 2011

Barbara McCann's work imbues a heavy impasto palatte knife technique with a sense of solidity and dimension. It is a technique well-suited to her impressionistic style.

Her use of light, rich saturated color and application of heavily textured paints mark her as as an heir to the impressionists’ ideals – to create works that represents a feeling the image evokes rather than the accurate reproduction of “reality.”  Light, shadow, color, texture and perspective are the fundamental elements Barbara uses to create her visions of warmth, wonder and life.

She is equally at home painting representational or abstract work. She creates a canvas with color, movement and energy whether she shows you the image or she lets you see the image.


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Cafe Mentone


Cafe Mentone

SOLD

Floral Reflections

 

Floral Reflections ...

 

 

Gateway

 

Gateway ...


Water Lillies II

 

Water Lillies II...

 

Le Bistrot

 

Le Bistrot ...

 

Ready Set

 

Ready Set...

 

 

Abstract

 

Abstract ...

 

Red Night

 

Red Night ...

 

 

The Green Vase

 

The Green Vase

SOLD

 

Iris Delight

 

Iris Delight

SOLD

 

Mums and Roses

 

Mums and Roses

SOLD

Americana

 

Americana

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The Pass

 

The Pass

SOLD

 

Résumé

Barbara McCann was born in 1948 in New Castle, Pennsylvania.

She began her artistic endeavors with drawing as a child, and then with painting in her teenage years. At the age of 18, she took a four-year apprenticeship in architectural illustration and design, which set the stage for a career in art.

McCann moved to Florida in 1973, and for the next 20 years ran her own architectural illustration and design studio. Barbara's career and interests in illustrative art and fine art dovetailed.

While maintaining her business, McCann explored a variety of mediums and methods for landscape and portrait painting. In the early to mid-seventies, she studied oils with acclaimed figure painter Marilyn Bendell. While under Bendell's tutelage, McCann discovered the works of Nicola Simbari, an Italian artist whose vision and style has been an enduring inspiration for her.

She has also been influenced by the abstract impressionists. Motherwell, Franz Kline, Diebenkorn and of course Hans Hoffman. I found it to be a natural move to abstraction after painting still life and landscapes for many years.

My figurative work started out representational and wound up abstracted. I followed that instinctively and one day I just began painting large abstracts. I guess I just basically love to paint.


In the late seventies, McCann worked to develop a more fluid, translucent presentation in her art. At Bendell's suggestion, she took up watercolors, studying with renowned artists Valfred Thelin and Charles Reid. She melded her fine art talents with her illustrative work by painting architectural renderings in watercolors, which caused a sensation among her clients. Demand for her illustrations began to escalate.

In the mid-eighties, McCann returned to oils as her primary medium, utilizing watercolors solely for sketches of landscapes and people.

McCann's skills in art and architectural illustration led to an appointment as an instructor with the Ringling College of Art & Design. This was quite an honor for a self taught artist.

Her work spoke for her and in 1983 Arland Christ-Janer, the brilliant President of the school at that time,ask Barbara to come and teach her skills to the students at Ringling. From 1983 to 1993, she taught classes in perspective drawing, illustration and water color at the Florida college, which is rated as one of the finest art schools in the United States. She developed an approach to the intrinsically difficult study of perspective that made it comprehensible and useful to even novice artists. This period in her life helped her to hone her skills to teach and eventually she began making her own teaching videos.

Over the course of her career, McCann steadily expanded both her illustrative and fine art clientele. The strong interest in her paintings led her to establish a gallery in Sarasota, Florida in 1991.

In 1993, Barbara was exhibiting at the first ever National Print Show in Charlotte , North Carolina where the publishing branch of parent company,Fidelity Mutual was scouting for talented artists to print nationally and internationally. She was placed under contract shortly after meeting their representative and her career was to take off. She remained at the publishing house for 3 years to leave for a bigger jump to a San Francisco, California based publishing house. Barbara spent the next seven years with Fingerhut Publishing.

During this time she had 21 one person shows and was exhibited regularly at the New York Expo in New York city. There she was introduced to clients from around the world who were interested in representing her work. Because of this exposure her work is in many public and private collections.

For the last nine years Barbara McCann has been self-publishing and continues to work and live in Florida. She finds aesthetic inspiration both near and far – from the sunny climate of her home to locales she frequently visits in her extensive travels: the Caribbean, the West Indies, Central America, Greece, and Europe. She currently is represented nationally with select galleries.