page_title: Jenny Sages
section_title: Helen Garner
hierarchical_section_title: Jenny Sages / Relationship with Portrait Subjects / Helen Garner
caption_attribution_description: English: Helen Garner at Adelaide Writer's Week
context_page_description: Jenny Sages is an Archibald Prize People's Choice Award winning Australian artist born 1933 in Shanghai, China. She is known for her abstract landscape paintings and portraits. She arrived in Australia in 1948. After being expelled from East Sydney Tech, Jenny moved to New York to study at Franklin School of Art. She was a freelance writer and illustrator for Vogue Australia until the 1980s before starting full-time painting in 1985 at the age of 52. Her career transformation was greatly influenced by a trip to Kimberley, Western Australia, where she felt enchanted by the local indigenous culture. Her unique style is created using wax and pigments and the minimal use of brushes.
context_section_description: Sages started to seek opportunity to paint Garner since 1996, after reading Garner’s book True Stories. Garner has declined other opportunities to be painted in the past, as she said, “It's bad enough having your photo taken, …, but my portrait - that's too much to bear. You have to sit in the room with the person for a long time and it needs to be somebody that you can get on with and maybe even like!” In 2002, the two first met upon Sages’ request in Melbourne, where the writer reside; Garner later visited Sages house in Sydney, where Sages drew her. Garner described their time as “very pleasurable,” and Sages returns the feeling, saying they had “a wonderful encounter.”
  During their visits, Sages completed 37 drawings of the writer, which were the source of elements for the portrait she later completed. Art historian Sarah Engledow commented on the drawings now under the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, “though they are 'preparatory' works these paintings are good examples of Sages' skill at capturing the light of varying times of day.” 
  Sages produced the portrait of Helen Garner, True Stories - Helen Garner in 2003, and won the Archibald Prize finalist the same year. The painting was completed with her usual medium, wax-based surface and rubbed-in pigments. Garner said “I immediately felt that it was me,” as she first saw her portrait at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She also appreciates Sages portraying her in less flattering but more realistic aesthetic. “When I looked at the painting I just felt that she had seen me in some quite deep way'.” Sages was approached by Portrait Gallery Director Andrew Sayers, who was interested in including the work in his gallery collection; Sage then offered the portrait as a donation to the gallery.
caption: Photograph of author Helen Garner
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