Barbara McCann Biography

Barbara McCann creates scenes that the viewer feels he or she can walk right into. Her use of the palette knife adds a textural level to her images, which contributes 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 as an heir to the impressionists' 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 uses 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. 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.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.

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. From 1983 to 1993, she taught classes in perspective drawing and illustration 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.

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 the early nineties and until 2001 she was represented by a large publisher and gallery chain in the United States. Barbara McCann is currently 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.