Margaret Mccann

My approach is both perception-based and surrealist. I move things around, scrape things out, and see the painting's identity emerge over time. My spatial sense is an amiable, cubistic “horror vacui,” my brain probably hardwired toward complexity from growing up as one of ten children.
I like painting the figure foreshortened, where forms move back in space yet stack up on the picture plane, contradictions that echo Cubism. Scale dislocation began to appear in my work when I lived in Rome eight years. I painted still life as visionary cities, then placed giant figures in them. I went there on a Fulbright to study saints' strange fusion of the neurotic and the sublime, which continues in portraits with thought, emotion, and memory piled up on my head.
Still lifes often contain references to Monopoly, which was based on Atlantic City, where I lived four years, and which reminded me of Rome’s historical center in an inverse way: intense visual drama, a small scale, sculptural effect, and self-conscious architecture. But Roman monuments heroically endure, while Atlantic City structures last no longer than their frivolous functions do - a caricature of American values. In all my paintings, detailed rendering vs. flat color, sensitivity...

Yale U. - MFA in Painting
Washington U. in St. Louis - BFA in Painting
NY Studio School 1982-83
Yale at Norfolk summer program

SOLO | TWO-PERSON SHOWS
2023 Memorabilia - Barton College, NC
2022 Margaret McCann and Trine Giaever – Six Summit Gallery, Port Authority NY
2019 Megalographies - Exeter Gallery, Baltimore MD
2016. Big Heads and Small Giants… McCann… Megan Marlatt – Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesv. VA
2012 From Rome to Atlantic City - U. of Virginia Ruffin Hall Gallery – catalog
2011 What We Worry? - Atlantic Cape Community College, Atlantic City NJ
2011 Giants on the Boardwalk - Atlantic City Art Center, The Boardwalk NJ
2010 Phantasmas - Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry NY
2010 Boardwalkers - Atlantic City Art Center, The Boardwalk NJ
2009 Greetings from Atlantic City - Stockton Art Gallery Pomona NJ
2008 Sampler: Paintings from Now and Then - Oxbow Gallery Northampton MA
2007 Out of the Blue - Oxbow Gallery, Northampton MA
2007 The Art of Losing - The Painting Center Project Room NYC
2006 Lo Straniamento del’ Io - Antonia Jannone Milan – catalog; essay by Fabrizio Dentice
2005 Headworks - Three Graces Gallery Portsmouth NH
2003 Still at Large Again - Oblivia Gallery Portsmouth NH
2003 Grandiosities: Margaret McCann...