Barbara McCann was one of America's great painters. She was more than an artist with our gallery, she was a great friend and we miss her very much. Barbara lived with a passion that many never experience. We are so very happy we knew her.
We have her still life oil paintings as well as one contemporary piece. In addition, we are able to offer enhanced giclees and serigraphs and prints. If you are a Barbara McCann collector, give us a call to be placed on a call list as her work becomes available.
Barbara McCann created scenes that the viewer feels he or she can walk right into. Her use of the palette knife added a textural level to her images, which contributed to the overall impression of liveliness. This heavy impasto technique imbues objects and figures with an air of solidity and dimension. It is a technique well suited to her impressionistic style. Barbara's love of light, use of rich, saturated color, and application of heavily textured paints mark her as a heir to the impressionist's ideals-to create works that concentrate on the feelings a scene evokes rather than the accurate reproduction of "reality." Light, shadow, color, texture, and perspective are the fundamental elements Barbara used to create visions of warmth and wonder, full of life and light.
Barbara McCann was born and raised in western 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. Her career and her interest in illustrative art dovetailed.
While maintaining her business McCann explored a variety of mediums and methods for landscape and portrait painting. 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 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.
In the mid eighties McCann returned to oils as her primary medium, using 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 and Design from 1983 to 1993 at what is recognized as one of the finest art schools in the country. Barbara's work is represented by Mary Martin Gallery of Fine Art in Charleston, South Carolina."
