Leila Rose Fanner

Leila Rose Fanner is a painter and illustrator whose work blends joyful escapism with personal reflections on identity, memory, and belonging. Born in California and raised in Pilgrim’s Rest, South Africa, she grew up immersed in nature and creativity, inspired by her mother’s garden and the surrounding mountains.

She began making and selling crafts at ten, from papier-mâché animals to Barbie outfits, turning everyday materials into art. Her practice, intuitive and luminous, spans figurative and abstract work, often featuring silhouetted forms, South African flora, intricate patterns, and folkloric motifs, exploring the soul’s journey through the physical world.

Trained at the Johannesburg National School of the Arts, she later studied graphic design and watercolour and held her first solo exhibition in 1993. Her work has been featured in seven solo exhibitions in South Africa, including four at Solo Studios: Art Town in Riebeek Kasteel, and internationally in Los Angeles and New York.

Fanner’s paintings are in collections worldwide and have been showcased in art fairs including the Investec Art Fair and ICTAFF. She has illustrated and created cover art for several publications, including Monster by Dzifa Benson (UK, 2024), Selvbiogravien Om Min Mor by Jamaica Kincaid (Denmark, 2024), and Zone 3 (USA, 2021), and is under contract with Chronicle Books (USA) for an anthology of Black American poets (2026).

She is represented in Cape Town by The Artists Gallery.