Pastels stay upstairs at Connie and Dennis McCann's house in Maumelle.
Connie's studio is downstairs. She sits at a drawing board, listening quietly to audiobooks while she works. A photograph of a teenage girl, brow furrowed and holding up a peace sign is re-created with brighter-than-life colors on a canvas.
Dennis works upstairs, with Led Zeppelin blaring from a set of speakers. He stands while he draws, pushing the pastel into the paper with an aggressive hand.
Pastels are messy -- the material tends to cling to hands, clothes and somehow makes its way to users' feet to be tracked all over the house.
Dennis and Connie, who have been married since they were in college, say that art has permeated their lives together, clinging to the fabric of their family.
"It's what we do," Dennis said. "I mean, I guess I would draw and paint regardless of whether people bought my work or not."
They went on vacations to art museums or to deliver Dennis' work to galleries across the country. Connie, 63, taught all three of their children in art classes and their oldest son, Jason McCann, has gone on to become one of Little Rock's top budding artists.
Dennis, 65, has always preferred pastels. He said his style hasn't changed much since he started studying art in Jonesboro.
"I can show you a drawing I did in the '80s and it would look like it was done last week," Dennis said.
Dennis has jumped from landscapes and architectural pieces to drapery for his subject matter. His work is representational, similar to the photographs he works from, although there may be slight differences between reality and his piece.
"Even though his work is realistic, it has some abstract quality to it," Connie said.
Connie and Dennis met while they were in school at Jonesboro. He went intending to study architecture but found out when he got there that Arkansas State University did not have an architecture program.
CRISP LINES OF BUILDINGS
The remnants of that dream can be seen in the crisp lines of buildings in his architectural series, which he completed while he was still working as a Little Rock firefighter. He ended that career as a captain at Central Station. His son would follow in his footsteps and spend about a year as a Little Rock firefighter.
Dennis became a firefighter because he could work for 24 hours and then have 48 hours off, time to work in the studio.
"It was perfect for me because I love the serving of the community," Dennis said. "And it was rewarding and making a difference."
A small navy flag hangs on the wall outside his studio with yellow lettering that reads "LRFD Fire Marshal."
While Dennis was working with the flames and the canvases, Connie was teaching middle-school and high-school art.
She retired about four years ago, after teaching at then-Ridge Road Junior High, North Little Rock High School and Hall High School. She also gave private lessons for groups of adults or children at home.
"I liked having them [her children] at the school with me," she said. "I liked to know what they were doing, who their friends were, things like that, but other than that it was just like teaching any other student."
Jason said when his mother was teaching, he would find himself walking around the classroom and helping other students because he had been immersed in art ever since he could remember.
"I would find myself working with the kids that she was teaching even though I was younger than them," Jason said. "Not that I knew more than them, but I had enough of a background growing up with two artists that I could help them."
Jason, now 40, entered his first piece in the annual Delta Exhibition, a show of work from artists of the Mississippi Delta held at the Arkansas Arts Center, when he was 19. He and Dennis were the first father-son duo to enter the show at the same time, Dennis said.
"If they know much about Arkansas, they should know who I am," Dennis said. "And I think Jason is developing that kind of following."
Connie said she plans to submit a piece for the next show, although not many submissions make it into the exhibit.
"It's my favorite show to be a part of," Jason said. "I like the show. I like the people that are in it with me, and I like being around the Arts Center. It's where I grew up."
Jason and Dennis are represented by Boswell Mourot Fine Art, a Little Rock gallery. Jason had a show at the gallery in October featuring his series "The American Student."
WATERCOLOR, CHARCOAL, PASTEL
The series is inspired by his work as an advanced art teacher at Little Rock Central High School and uses layers of watercolor, charcoal and pastel to create portraits of the students.
"I just draw the kids in the spaces that they have to exist every day as kind of a portrait of who they are, and so they're not forgotten," Jason said. "Because that's the thing that we forget in all of our policies and political upheaval is the people that are affected by this more than anybody."
The layers on his recent series allow the viewer to see the initial sketch marks as well as the finishing touches of color.
"The paint drips and runs, it's loose and almost still looks wet in some areas. ... That's kind of what I go for is I want the art to feel spontaneous. I want it to feel as though you can see the artist's hand, but you can still see the subject," Jason said.
All three McCanns share that urge for spontaneity.
Dennis works on a piece from start to finish, not waiting to meticulously sketch out a draft -- he gets an idea and runs with it.
Connie said her audiobooks allow her to distance herself from what she is doing. If her brain is otherwise occupied, she can just draw.
ALLOWING SPONTANEITY
Her son tries to allow spontaneity in his classes by giving students at Central High loose guidelines, allowing them to become "artists in and of themselves."
Jason also teaches art at Arkansas Governor's School and had one of his younger sisters in class. She is now a Spanish teacher in Conway, although their mother said she would have been a double major in Spanish and art if there had been more time.
"She [his sister] had the most overall potential, but it wasn't what she wanted to do," Jason said. "She has a love for languages, she loves teaching so it's what she's doing now."
The McCann children were all interested in art, but Jason stuck out.
"I was in my studio a lot and Jason would come in, and he'd grab a paintbrush, and he'd paint the bottom of the canvas," Dennis said.
Jason has also taken on Connie's private lessons; Connie and Dennis travel a lot now that they are both retired.
He teaches Monday nights from his home studio. He used to share a space with his father. They would sometimes bump into each other while they were working, but when Jason and his wife bought their own house, he made sure there was a studio space.
The studio is small. A New York Yankees' flag and a poster of the stadium hang in the corner of the room. An apron is next to the door, coated with color and stiff to the touch.
For his first class, seven girls sit in a circle around a cluster of vases. The vases are filled with water and food coloring, casting green and purple shadows on the floor.
Jason wants them to use the shadows, colors and shapes to form a story. After everyone is settled in -- several forgot pencils, pastels or paper -- his middle daughter Leah, 10, wanders in to sit on a stool and watch them draw.
PARENT AS A TEACHER
Leah's class is later that evening. As did her father, she is learning art with a parent as a teacher.
"I don't know if it's something they're [his kids] going to pursue," Jason said. "In a way I do, in a way I just kind of let them be. I hope that if it's something that they decide to do, that it happens organically like it did for me."
As the class came to a close, the girls gathered their pencils and drawing pads and filed out the door. They walked past a drawing in the living room of five cartoon figures, one with squiggly brown hair.
Leah pointed to it: "I do good cartoons."
"She does other good drawings, too, when she sits down and takes her time," Jason said, reaching out to adjust the drawing.
Style on 12/17/2017