Artist Database

Jane Wiles was born in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape and moved with her mother and sister to the Transkei when she was young. There her mother Lucy became an artist and took art lessons from WG Wiles. Through this interaction, Lucy met, fell in love with, and married his son Brian. Following in her family's footsteps, Jane pursued art at Rhodes University in 1964 but switched to English Literature after two years. In 1969, Wiles became an English Lecturer at the University College of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Between 1979 and 1983, she taught English at Fort Hare University and then from 1983 to 1994 at the University of Zululand. She continued painting during these years and in 1994 she left academia to become a full-time artist. In the early 2000s, she moved to Bathurst in the Eastern Cape where she opened the Wiles Gallery.