His dancing musical and mythical figures emerge from vibrant and instinctively painted backgrounds. In this regard can be noted a detachment of figure from their surroundings, as Beckett admired in Yeats; the juxtaposition, not the linkage, of landscape and figures. Further, due to McCann's use of saturated and bold colour and his use of the same method in applying knife to canvas there is a passing, albeit unrelated visual resemblance. A self-taught artist, who emerged from troubled streets of Belfast in the 1960's, McCann was something of a prodigy - learning to draw to impress his schoolmates and attracting the disbelieving ire of some schoolteachers who thought that his dyslexia precluded his excelling in any field. So taken with his burgeoning talent, John Luke, the consummate draughtsman, took him under his wing.