Okay, let's start at the beginning. How the heck do you pronounce, Lené? 

Since just about every possibility known to man has been concocted to try to pronounce it, she's been know to answers to anything that remotely rhymes. That seems to be one of the hazards of having a 'unique' name and creative parents. But preferably you can say it something like Len'ay (or Len'ā for the pho•net•i•cal•ly adept). It may help to know that it is French and so the é is pronounced just the same way as with René. 

So just who is Lené Pienaar?

Lené is a born and bred South African. Since it's rude to ask a woman's age we'll just go ahead and tell you, she arrived in 1976. Was she always arty? Well not in the broader sense of the word but yes, always making something. If it wasn't drawing endlessly with a pencil, then it was making mud sculptures in the garden or writing poems and songs - but always something. Having said that though, she never imagined she'd end up an artist. No, the business world was for her, having the odd combination of a scientific, logical, mathematical and yet heavily artistic brain. Besides who makes a living on art, right?

So off she went to study graphic design, the perfect marriage of business and creativity. She spent 4 years getting her honours degree and headed on up to scale the corporate ladder. Or so she thought until the practicalities of the real world and the two-minutes-a-piece-assembly-line-logos got the better of her. In truth there was far more to it than that, but this seems neither the time nor place for the whole story.

So she left the corporate world to do a little soul searching about the meaning of life. In that time she did a painting, unlikely as that was back then. You see, in high school and university she excelled in every art discipline except painting. That was the one thing she always avoided and the one they always gave her a pass for - but not a percent higher! But this painting she wasn't making for a teacher, or lecturer or a mark. In practice, that meant she could abandon the baffling world of abstraction for the style she really loved - realism. It went a little badly for a first attempt though - not the painting but the plan that is. She had set out to do a figurative triptych, composed of a face, a hand and a torso. But try that at home and you will see just how contorted a person can look. The solution, she decided, was to abandoned the head for a second hand. Two hands and a torso - there, that looked much better!

It wasn't the plan (well not hers anyway) to take the cast-off face into a gallery, but it happened. It also wasn't expected that they would sell it within 4 days, but they did! And after recovering from the shock, she tried it all again. And the rest as they say, is history.

So how did the girl who never thought she could paint, get here? 

Actually she found the commercial art world rather welcoming of her work. Only a year after she started painting, Nataniël approached her for the cover of a CD of his. And then one after another the doors began to open. It was about 4 years later when she found herself suddenly chosen for a project along with a small, hand picked group of some of the world's most renown artists. We're talking about, among others, the living artists that rakes in the highest prices worldwide for her art. The guy who hides in the Tibetan mountains only to expose his art once a year when investors from all around the world flock in to nab something, anything. We're talking about a project so big, Oprah was going to showcase it and the who's who of Hollywood were going to attend the launch! This was it, the big break, until it turned into the big bang because a few of the masterminds behind the scenes began a legal feud. And all that just about a few million bucks here or there - really now! So anyway, pretty soon all that was left was 'on hold until further notice' - and still is.   

And then God... Ah! The words that change everything! Then God intervened in Lené's work for what seemed to be the first time. He asked if she would hand it over to Him, to surrender every ambition and purpose to Him. You'd like to hear how she dropped everything the very next day, wouldn't you? Well she didn't. In truth it took all of 2 years to really surrender but she eventually withdrew from all the galleries around the country and gave it all over to Him. That was how the exhibition Gates of Glory was born, in blind faith and not a little trepidation. She was given a simple task, stay at home and paint what the Lord laid on her heart - He would do the rest. That exhibition changed her world and cemented her determination to surrender her work to an oh-so-much-more-than-worthy God! And this website, this new place to exhibit Art for God's Glory is the next step in that journey. And may He find pleasure in it all!

What's God up to now? Well, His humor never ceases to amaze. Now He's got the somewhat dyslexic artist writing a novel! Oh go on, have a chuckle - you know you want to! And then it seems it will be the music... and who but God knows what's after that?

May this website bring your thoughts to the Lord rather than to 'Just who is Lené Pienaar?' or anything equally pale next to His beauty. We hope you will be blessed and find something of His abiding presence here - all to God's glory alone! Amen.