Glenys Johnson was initially involved in performance art as well as painting, touring in the late 1970s with the Theatre of Mistakes. In 1989 her painting was the subject of a solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London and since then she has exhibitied widely. Her works of the 1980s were often politically charged and she has frequently addressed life in the modern metropolis as in recent paintings that universalise the cityscape of London and present the city as a place in flux, either on the point of growth or collapse.

Glenys Johnson is represented by James Hyman Gallery.