Leanie Barnard Mentz, was born in Pretoria and graduated from the Open Window Art Academy in 2004. She studied visual communication and is a multi-disciplinary artist. She is the owner of a floral design company that specializes in corporate events and weddings, creating large scale installations with her flowers.

Exploring boundaries and traces, she creates large scale paintings and drawings with layers of thick paint and charcoal. She is interested in how multiple realities exist together and how everything is in constant flux. Her works are neither documentation nor fiction. They depict human life, and more importantly the human condition. Ambiguity and multiplicity of possible meanings are a driving force in her work.

Many of her pieces explore the human form, body language, imperfections, and movement, and are often characterized by spontaneous and gestural brushstrokes. She often leaves imperfections, “search marks” or “traces” in her works. The layering creates movement and emotion. Traces of a former self will always remain. This also plays on the idea that we are confronted by a perfect world on social media every day, so we have to choose carefully what to reveal or conceal to the outside world.

She is drawn to the raw expressive qualities of charcoal and oil paint as her chosen media.