From classroom to canvas, retired Little Rock educator and artist Connie McCann transforms photographs into vibrant oil paintings. With 25 years of teaching experience, her specialty lies in portraiture, the human figure and still life.
Connie begins by carefully arranging compositions, often featuring one of her 10 grandchildren, capturing them on camera and reinterpreting those images with oil paint or soft pastel. Her drawing, “Best Buddies,” on the cover this month, started as a study for an oil painting and was inspired by a quiet moment between her granddaughter, Reilly, and her dog, Daisy.
“They were sitting near a window, and the light and shadows were perfect, so I snapped a photo, and ‘Best Buddies’ was the result,” Connie says.
Connie began teaching in North Little Rock and spent most of her career at Hall High School in Little Rock, where she served as chair of the Art Department and was twice awarded the Little Rock School District Crystal Award, as well as the Arkansas Art Educators Secondary Art Teacher of the Year Award.
Connie says the most rewarding part of teaching was watching her students take the same tools and techniques and make something entirely their own.
“They can be given the same information, the same demonstration and the same materials and will still each create wonderfully different types of artworks."
Connie’s works can be viewed at Boswell Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock, on Instagram at @csmccann_art or mccannfineart.com.