JANINE GLANZ

JANINE GLANZ (b. 1968) is a painter based in the village of Riebeek-Kasteel, an hour’s drive from Cape Town. Her work is driven by instinct, memory, and an ongoing negotiation between intention and surrender — between the painting she sets out to make and the one that emerges in the process of making it.

Glanz’s relationship with art began in childhood, but her path to painting was neither straight nor swift. After studying graphic design, she pursued a career as a chartered accountant, raising a family while keeping her passion for painting alive as a quiet, persistent undercurrent. It was only during the Covid pandemic — when the world slowed and her children had grown — that she gave herself full permission to paint. Since then, she has dedicated herself entirely to learning, experimenting, and discovering herself through her work.

Her practice resists formula. Some paintings begin with a clear idea, gestating for weeks before she touches the canvas. Others begin with no plan at all — just a brush, a blank surface, and the willingness to see what happens. Many of her works carry the memory of earlier paintings beneath their surfaces: underlayers that are partially revealed, reworked, or allowed to bleed through into the final image. This layered quality is both technical and emotional. Glanz has spoken about the difficulty — and the necessity — of letting go of what a painting once was in order to become what it needs to be.

A recurring source of inspiration has been the discovery of her late father’s old photographic slides. These images from another era — intimate, faded, irretrievable — have fed a deep sense of nostalgia in her work, a longing for simpler times that finds its way onto the canvas without becoming sentimental.

In 2025, Glanz was selected as one of ten artists for WORLDART10, WORLDART’s annual competition dedicated to discovering and showcasing exciting contemporary talent across South Africa. Her solo exhibition, Let’s Make Mistakes Tonight And Go For Therapy Tomorrow, a body of new paintings, opens at WORLDART in June 2026.