Kannan was a painter and fine arts student for close to ten years after finishing high school. His terminal degree is a post-graduate diploma in fine arts, with a specialization in painting.

​He departed from meticulous analytical pointillist technique, through division of color and tones, to be absolutely free with watercolor technique as well as in the acrylic medium, rendered on paper.  From themes based on nature such as forests, mangroves, and underwater, he painted a landscape of pure imagination. Forms and colors internalized over decades of work poured out in a free dance of brush strokes, with various colors, textures, tints, and tones.