Chris Cran is a well known Calgary artist whose paintings have been exhibited across Canada and the United States.

Cran studied at the Kootenay School of Art in Nelson, B.C., before attending the Alberta College of Art in Calgary (where he later became an instructor). Cran's art practice has always been marked by a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour paired with extraordinary technical skill.

He is best known for his photo-realistic, self-portrait painting series, created between 1984 and 1989, and his half-tone stripe paintings of the past 20 years. These later pieces take found images from a variety of print media and replicate them at a multiplied scale, leading to distortion and optical illusion on the surface of the canvas.