Jenny Sages Greg Weight making a portrait of Tom Bass

Now in the collection of Tweed Regional Gallery, NSW, this Jenny Sage painting is actually a portrait of a portrait in process.

Greg Weight is a fine art photographer who has been producing portraits of artists in their studios for the last 30 years. Tom Bass is the director of Sydney’s only sculpture school and has created many significant and familiar public works.

Sages says that she began this work by “stalking my subjects as they go about their business … the following week saw us all in Tom’s sculpture studio and school circling each other”. Sages initially wanted to do a painting of the two men in the portraiture process. It became, in the end, more a painting of the two men in deep conversation. As Sages says, “Greg set up lights for his portrait session but got deeply involved in listening to Tom’s stories of studying with Dattilo-Rubbo”.

Jenny Sages was born in Shanghai in 1933 and arrived in Australia in 1948. She studied at East Sydney Technical College and the Franklin School of Art, New York. In the 1950s she also took lessons with John Olsen and Mary White and then freelanced as an illustrator for nearly 30 yeras. Since 1985 Sages has been painting full time and has won numerous prizes including the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 1992 and 1994, and The Warringah Art Prize and Mosman Art Prize also in 1994. She has been hung in the Archibald five times previously.