[Silence]

Victoria Hynes: It's Saturday, August 31st, 2013 and I'm in the Sydney harbour side suburb of Double Bay. And I'm in the studio of the award winning portrait painter and landscape artist Jenny Sages.

[Silence]

Jenny, thank you for joining us.

Jenny, I wonder if we could begin the interview by talking a little about your early life. You were born in 1933 in Shanghai, China, to Russian parents. You lived there until the 1940s, before you came to Australia. Can you tell us a little bit about your Russian heritage and your childhood in Shanghai?

Jenny Sages: For me, it was the normal thing to do. I've never been to Russia to this day and I regret that. But I went to British schools, and I went to French schools. My family, and I also didn't know, but my mother and father had a great time I think, I think, because the French Club was close by. They went to tea dances, and stuff like that, but I only know about it now.

On the other hand, my brother and I -- who's two years younger than I am -- and we went in the windows and it was very cold and we'd take the ice off the windows, but looked down and see all the beggars that had been thrown on trucks because of the cold. That happened daily.

So there's this contrast of the wonderful dancing, and stuff. I had to learn ballet, that's for sure, because there were a lot of Russian people that needed money. I remember that strongly.

Victoria: Your father was a silk merchant.

Jenny: Well, he got them from Paris, the coloured ... the silks. The silks were there, and I remember them very clearly in small rolls. They were not made for rich Russians as you thought it might be, but rich Chinese ladies for their cheongsam's.

Jenny: But that was great because the colours ... You know, it was probably about that size, a very small one, and they were rolled, the lovely colors. Now, that you remind me, of course I had a good time with those. I liked them.

Victoria: It must have been such a rich period, it was known as the "Paris of the Orient" at that time.

Jenny: Yeah, it was pretty good. It didn't last all that long, because after that the Japanese came in and took over and so some of the British people. I think we... I don't know what we had, but some of the British people were sent to -- well, not jail, to...

Victoria: Into camps?

Jenny: So where?

Victoria: Into camps.

Jenny: Into camps. Thank you.

Victoria: So that was the period that you came out to Australia?

Jenny: No. That was after that, it was Mao's time, when they were coming in. My father, he has family with two generations in China doing ... I think over the border they were selling pelts or bring them back. The uncles, both had shops in the French Concession, and brought my father out when he was 14. And then, I don't know...his...I remember that my mother came through, but it's the same family, and that's why I'm a bit crazy. [laughs]

I don't know what you'd call it, but the family is the same. So, after the Japanese came, my father had enough, and Mao was coming in very strongly. And that's when we went to... and I was fourtee... In 1948, I was pretty young then, about 14, or something.

Victoria: So Sydney must have seemed very drab in comparison.

Jenny: No. I didn't ... you know I didn't ... That was all I know. Yeah, probably it was drab, because I went straight into Sydney High ... fourth year, and that was just so boring. There were a lot of girls from sort of Berlin or someth ... What's her name Cox? What's the first name?

Victoria: Eva Cox.

Jenny: Eva Cox, yes. You know, people like that, really intelligent, really real intelligent, and I didn't know what I was doing. They wouldn't have lunch with me in the front of the ... I was alone. Margaret Fink was my only friend. She was Margaret something else then. But then it was kind of ... and they ... and art was, you wouldn't do nudes, because it was a long time ago. So I had a ... yes, yes .. it lasted but...

Victoria: After arriving in Sydney, you attended Sydney Girl's High School, and then went onto the National Art School briefly, before leaving Australia again going to study in New York at the Franklin School of Art. New York in the 1950's must have been an incredible time with the rise of abstract expressionism. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about your time there.

Jenny: I was 17. I didn't know nothing. Chased boys I think. But ... it was a time when the GI's were, they were 28, and they were in the same school that I was. They were hungry for that GI -- you know, they got money to pay for all that thing. But to go back to the school that I went to...What was Sydney?

Victoria: Sydney's girls?

Jenny: No, not that one. The art one.

Victoria: Franklin School of Art or the National Art School?

Jenny: National Art School and it was Shellito. She did design, and that's what I did. There were a whole bunch of girls waiting to get married, because that's ... it was just stuff that I was going through. It was boring. That was boring too, though, she was very good. She's well-known as a designer.

And I used to climb through ... that wooden building is still there. If you go into the school, you'll see it on the right hand side. They had a glass thing up on top, like I have in here. And I used to climb through it to go to movies. My bum was the last bum [indecipherable], so they expelled me.

I remember mother standing there and said, "How can you be expelled from that kind of school?" She didn't understand. Also, I didn't want to make my debut at the Trocadero. So even ... at that time and I was really, really young then, I kind of knew that I didn't need to go.

So I then... and so she asked what all ... my dad stood there I think, and they asked, "What do you want?" I said, "I wanted to be an artist, and you have to go to Paris to be an artist." They said, "Well, we don't know anybody in Paris, but we have lots of friends in New York." I said, "Done." That's how it all happened.

Victoria: How did you find New York in 1950's? That must have been an extraordinary time.

Jenny: It was. I ended up in Third Avenue underneath the El, because they kicked me out. My mother's friends kicked me out of their house. It's crazy ... look at me. I'm OK. I don't do strange things. Actually, can I go back on something?

Victoria: Yes.

Jenny: Travelling ... so we decided we were going to go to New York, and she wrote the right people for it. You went by boat then. You didn't get in a flight, and just off you are. So, we went to Perth. My mother took me to Perth. I wanted a boat .. you see I've lost it ... you know, boats that take things and drop them off.

Victoria: Oh, like a freight.

Jenny: Freight, yes. That's what it was. It was travelling. My mother took me there. We both came on board, and there were six nuns there with white wimples up there, and me. It's a month's trip because you went to Sri Lanka. That's why I chose it. I thought there would be wonderful things happening. The staff were great, but I had to stop there, two young men.

[laughter]

Victoria: It was quite an education, just the trip over.

Jenny: We had fun. It was good, it was good.

Victoria: And so were you influenced by the international art trends?

Jenny: Yes I was because I didn't know what that was, that. The galleries that ... all around me, I'd come in. And it was the Picasso thing was still there, the one with the war.

Victoria: "Guernica."

Jenny: "Guernica." It was there, and I went straight to it because I'd read about that. It was great. I'm so glad they kicked me out, my parent's friends. Because I went to the Y, it was underneath the EL. The EL's not there anymore. It was for girls that did music, and ballet, and art. That was great because you could see things pinned on the wall. You could go and see things and learn about that. With bits and pieces things kind of suited me for once.

Victoria: Did you have any influential teachers there?

Jenny: No, I preferred the GIs. I mean truly. No, because they were easier for me to talk to. You also had a label there. The boys at the good schools that went to really good schools, they came into town. and I would... if anybody asked me out on a date, because you didn't get ... I couldn't get a lot of money. My parents couldn't send out a lot of money at that time. It was something, the law, so anybody that asked me to dinner, I went. I'm still doing that.

Victoria: Got a good meal.

[laughter]

Jenny: It was a strange time, because there were so many people that didn't like all those young boys that were used to it, that...Anyway, I'll leave that one.

Victoria: You were there for three years?

Jenny: Yes. Three and a half.

Victoria: Then on the trip home you met your husband Jack, is that right?

Jenny: Yes, I wanted to go to Europe while I was there ... to Rome, and to all of the things that I'd read about by then. I got some more money from my parents. And I did that. And then ... I, I ... yes, I went through everything that I could, and then I ran out of money.

And then they then said ... I met Jack, and Jack was born in Turkey. But I have to go back to how I met him because ... they said, "OK, you can go to all the other things, but you have to go to Israel." I might have caught ... get a Jewish boy there. That was something that they wanted to do. I thought, "Well, OK."

I met Jack through friends of his who worked with him. The whole encounter was five days on the back of a motorcycle and in bed, and it's fifty year later. Yeah.

Victoria: He came back with you to Australia?

Jenny: No, he didn't because I had to go home. I hadn't been. I did work ... designing when I came back. We wrote letters, and stuff.

Victoria: And the rest is history.

Jenny: Yes.

Victoria: So, Jenny, then you returned to Australia and married Jack eventually. Was that in Israel that you got married?

Jenny: Yes, I went back. I spent a year here in Sydney. I did fashion drawings, and I started becoming a kind of artist in some way. We wrote. We corresponded. Then I went to Israel. My parents didn't come, but I went, and we were married there.

Victoria: Then you had your daughter, Tanya.

Jenny: Later, when I came back.

Victoria: Back in Sydney.

Jenny: Yes.

Victoria: Then spent the next three decades working as a commercial illustrator for magazines such as "Vogue Australia".

Jenny: What is ... up to my 50th, so how many decades was that?

[laughter]

Victoria: And that was working a lot for magazines like "Vogue Australia."

Jenny: Wonderful. It was a wonderful time, yes. I'd write. I'd say to them, "I want to go to New Guinea," and I would write and illustrate about that. Then, the fashion drawings were for the scho ... for the .. not for the schools, the shops, the fashion shops. What was the one that was very colorful? Mark Foy's. It was very classy. Yes, I did all the fashions drawings for Mark Foy's.

Victoria: Do you think your time as an illustrator provided a good skill base for your later work as a portrait painter?

Jenny: Yes, very much so. I couldn't fuss around. I had to have a ... you know ... it was ... discipline. It had to be done for that particular theme. To this day I think it was great. It was great.

Victoria: Great. A good foundation.

Jenny: Yes, and it paid the mortgage. We travelled a lot that way. I went to China that way, early, because my father had just died and I was writing for them.

Victoria: You travelled a lot as part of your job?

Jenny: Yes, at that time China hadn't changed, and windows of my childhood were there. I could see it. I took a friend, and we went on a bicycle from...Where was it they did gambling? Where were the gamblers? Macau?

Victoria: Macau, yes.

Jenny: Yes, we travelled with bicycles, and six other people. It was other Australians there.

Victoria: Incredible.

Jenny: That was terrific. I spent a month there.

Victoria: Jenny, skipping ahead. In 1983 you made your first trip to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It was there that you had an epiphany to become a full-time artist. Can you tell us a little bit about the impact that journey made on you?

Jenny: It was. I've been trying to remember the name of ... the very well know artist. I knew that I was going to do that. I hated him, and so I can't remember his name. [laughs] He's very well known. He's dead now.

Victoria: Who came with you on that first trip?

Jenny: He was ... it was something that he wrote in the paper. Shelley who's an architect was my friend. We went on one of those trips. The trip became bankrupt for some reason, for what they did. We found the Bungles, as it were. There was nobody there, only when you were in a plane you could see it.

Victoria: The Bungle Bungle.

Jenny: Yes, the Bungles. Then it was no going back for me. I remember Shelley trying to get me to eat, because I was so excited. There's just no way. I think most of my life I made a quick decision. It had to be. Maybe that's the Russian stuff ... drama queen. I'm very good at that.

Victoria: And what was it about the inland of Australia that had such an impact?

Jenny: I think it's because I had no place of my own that I could call. I'm not Chinese. I'm not Russian in a way, more Russian, but not really, more British than anything else. I had just embraced it enormously. I started moving in that direction and I dropped everything almost overnight. By then we probably must have had some money to pay for the house and the child.

Victoria: You started then making regular trips to central and northern Australia?

Jenny: Yes, and that was 24 years ago I could say that I've walked this country. It was just so wonderful, just so wonderful.

Victoria: I wonder if you could tell me a bit about some of the travel companions you've had on some of these journeys.

Jenny: A whole bunch. First it was, in the beginning, say, in the Alice area, and stuff, there were both of us, male and female. After a while I just wanted just women. There could be a reason for it, that we're quieter, and don't ask many questions. You go in there. You would just sort of walk in there.

Also, I didn't like the attitude. The guys would come in. I shouldn't then ... they did fun ... see that bird there ... for me? They said the eagles would come in. Because I'm so small I would climb high, and those eagles would come and get me for lunch. They were great. They were just lovely. They got that afterwards as a present for me.

It was all great, but in a sort of a way it edged towards just us, because they'd come in and they'd want a drink, or coffee, or a tea. All the girls would get up and make the coffees and teas for them. I thought, "Oh, shit. We don't need that."

So, I started moving. Jack helped me with that because the paperwork was good to do. I met somebody called Brendan, and a structure started coming, and it grew, and grew, and grew. Brendan's mother is a teacher for the indigenous people in Darwin. It grew, and it ended up with helicopters, and 12 of us, or whatever it is, were looking for rock art.

Victoria: These all other artists that you were...?

Jenny: No, not entirely. They were doctors, and lawyers, and would paint. I personally didn't paint. There was so much to do. It only came back to me and sort of emerged in some way.

Yes, and also I went to places. For instance, to go backwards to the time that I did Vogue, because whatever it is I was drawing about it, and it was important to me. New Guinea, for instance, was Tanya's sixteenth birthday. All those things. It's my choice of what we did, and since I only had one daughter, we travelled enormously. He spoke Spanish, and he was a Turk, and I was his woman. We did a lot of travelling.

Victoria: As a family.

Jenny: As a family.

Victoria: Yes, and would you always sketch while you were travelling?

Jenny: I did. I did back then, yes. I'm sorry, I went backwards.

Victoria: No, no. That in a way created a foundation for your later trips to the desert?

Jenny: They were different in context but the same thing. I did want, and I did draw. I liked drawing, and I had sort of things ... packages of stuff that I drew in. To this day going to Emily, for instance, all the drawing ... every portrait of mine would be because I had drawing in there.

Victoria: The works you've created in the response to the landscape tend towards abstraction rather than representation. You use organic shapes, and primal markings, and it's quite process driven. I wonder if that's more of an indigenous approach to the landscape?

Jenny: It could be, but I never sort of cross over. I'm not indigenous. I'm a short Jewish girl, and I'm not that either, because I don't care one way or another. But anyway ... but I, I just didnt want to ... it's theirs. I had many friends, and I love them. If you look at all those photographs around there you can see all the friends that I had.

We lugged in, twice in the dry season, and then lug out again. How much can I feel? I'm me. It's not, not ... I can't be them, even though I would want to. I learned so much. It was just the most perfect time of my life. Jack was really good about it. He would come, too.

Victoria: On the trips?

Jenny: In the beginning. They weren't trips. At the very beginning we'd go to Alice. He had such a great time with the various people that lived in that area that could be difficult.

Victoria: One of you distinct artistic techniques is to pour encaustic wax onto board, and then scratch and carve into it, and apply powdered pigment. Can you tell us a little bit about this process and how you developed the technique?

Jenny: I did a lot of reading and I saw that the encaustic, the wax went into...Pliny the Elder ... the coffins that come in. If you open them, the portrait of the person that is in the coffin, it never, you know, never sort of ... it stayed as it was. I started reading a bit of all of that. It was interesting, XIV century. It was interesting stuff.

A lot of people use it now, the wax, particularly in America, but they do it properly. You have to get heat from the back, or a heated thing, and the red. My brain doesn't work that way. I need to do things as quickly as it comes. The encaustic that I use now, is, is ... and for a long time. It's just a base as far as I'm concerned. I'm doing whatever it is that I know.

Jack would sometimes help me, to pour...or quite a lot, to pour the wax across, on the wooden thing that we had built for it. He would say, "Well, why don't you write down and see the amount that goes." I'd quarrel with him because that's right, because I'd bind it, and it goes a different way.

But it was interesting for me to find each encaustic. The wax, they're different. I didn't have a number of them. Sometimes they're better than others, and then when you have a bad one you can make something of it.

Victoria: Do you think that technique has affected your imagery in its tendency more towards abstraction?

Jenny: Yes, probably. Sure, yes. I've got stuff, I think, here. Anyway, whatever it is. I started off by doing real landscapes. I enjoyed that so much. Plein air is fabulous. You just sit there, and you have a good time. It's lovely.

Victoria: While you're in the landscape you sketch?

Jenny: I did. I painted all those times. That was great times, too. But then gradually as ... you're right, because it all kind of opened up. My paintings don't ... I don't do a drawing and then have a painting. They open up for me. They tell me where I can go. Sometimes it's really awful. I don't know what I'm doing.

But there's always the thing with encaustic. If I scratch into something, there's the underneath. It must give me something. But I would carry on. That's the Russian thing going on, "Oh my god, I'm going to kill myself. The work's awful."

Victoria: [laughs] But it also created this weathered effect, which seems very suitable for such an ancient landscape.

Jenny: It is. It's quite right what you're saying. Also, I can't bear bright, bright colors. I shouldn't say that, but Randi says I need to have a colour cause it sells better. She wouldn't mind, would she? We'll have to ask her.

Victoria: And your color palette? Where does that come from? From the desert?

Jenny: No, they're pigments. I've got pigments. I don't make the other. I buy some. I have a whole lot there. There's a thing there that...

Victoria: You just your fingers to rub in the pigments?

Jenny: I rub hard. Also, it's not healthy all the things that I'm doing. At this stage I don't care anymore.

Victoria: For many people you're best known for your portraiture. You've currently had a show touring from the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra of your major portraits. Which came first for you, landscape or portraiture?

Jenny: I don't know, both together.

Victoria: They were both together?

Jenny: Both together. Probably, because portraits actually, they could be from when I was doing fashion. That's where it came good.

Victoria: One of your first major portraits was of the legendary aboriginal painter Emily Kame Kngwarreye in 1987. That was the first portrait actually purchased for the National Portrait gallery in Canberra. Can you tell us a little about your encounter with Emily?

Jenny: I stalk. With portraits it's true. I've said it many times for Garner. Anyway, let's get back to Emily. I wanted Emily, so nothing could stop me. I was in that area anyway. The Utopia Girls, they're all there. Her mob was living near the Utopia area. There were two people, a family, that were running a property. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get at.

She would come back, would come to the property. They looked after her. But she didn't need looking after. She'd come in and her mob would follow her. I remember her getting some money from this, because she sold something. She picked up her bum and put it underneath it. She didn't want her mob to get it.

We were really good together. She was 83 at the time, and I told her I was 83, too. So we ... and the mob was sort of watching us. She didn't come ... and I was there for five days and she didn't come in the five days. Finally I was almost ready to go home.

Also, another reason, flying there, to that property, the Germans understood that the work that the aboriginal people are doing was really good. They were buying it and they were doing wonderful shows for it. I learned there, when I was waiting, that they'd hired a plane and they were coming in at that time, at six o'clock in the morning.

Victoria: What ... art collectors from ...

Jenny: Well, no, they were doing ... I thought that they wanted to meet her. I knew that in Germany there was going to be a show. They had one seat. I took that one seat, at six in the morning it was. They all went to sleep. The Germans went to sleep. I was just looking through the windows. It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.

They were buying, actually. They understood. I waited the five days. Then, one day I woke up in the morning, and my face was covered with...lotus ... the things that crunch. You know?

Victoria: Locusts?

Jenny: Locusts. You couldn't see my face, so I thought it was time to go. But then she turned up then. Locusts.

Victoria: I remember, I think, seeing a photo of you both sitting on the earth together, on the ground.

Jenny: Yes. They were under the story tree, and that's where all the drawings are that they...

Victoria: You sat there with her and...

Jenny: With her. The drawings say everything. You went to the ... last year ... remember, she said, "I'm tired," and then she said, "Have you got children?" Those are all the drawings. I said, "Yes." She said, "Then you have to work?"

I put it all down as I was drawing them, and I signed whatever she told me. She ended by saying, "I'm tired, I'm tired." There are quite a lot of them and Andrew Sayers said they wanted them for the Gallery, so that we had to donate it, because it really stuck together with the portrait.

Victoria: You've mentioned that it's essential for you to have a strong rapport with the subject that you're painting, and often it develops from a friendship. Can you tell us a little bit about how you select your subjects for your portraits?

Jenny: It has to be. That's why I only do one and I don't take commissions.

Victoria: And often is there already a friendship, or you seek the person out?

Jenny: No, Helen Garner ... I've just admired her work. And I stalked her. And that...that's...you know, the book that she read...that I read in that one, she talks about her sisters and their father of them, I think it was. "True Stories" it was called.

I wrote to her -- I don't know, delusions of grandeur, I'm really crazy -- I wrote to her and said ... and that's for the Archibald, and said, "Can I do you and your five sisters together?" She wrote back, "Are you crazy?"

Victoria: How did you take that?

Jenny: I waited, and it was about four years later I did a portrait of her.

Victoria: So you persist?

Jenny: I persist, yes, and Irina Baronova, but I don't have to ... She was Russian, and I didn't have to persist with that. I love her, we're such good friends. She was ... lived with her daughter in Byron for her last days. It was wonderful, because none of our families speak Russian and we both did. She was so scurrilous at 83.

Victoria: She was one of the original dancers from Ballets Russes.

Jenny: Yes, yes, she's gorgeous. She had...that was a beautiful time. We went to her funeral and we were just crying our way through, Tanya and I.

Victoria: I noticed that so many of your subjects are often very strong, independent women, such as Emily, Gloria Petyarre, Irina, Helen Garner.

Jenny: The Utopia ladies.

Victoria: Yes. Is that what you look for in a subject?

Jenny: No, not knowingly. It must just lead me to it. I've got others ...

Victoria: Do you have a particular process in making the portraits? Do you spend a lot of time with the sitter before you start?

Jenny: Yes, yes. It's a drawing again, once I catch them. For instance with Irina, I went to the area ... in Melbourne where the ballet was there. She was giving them all her knowledge for the ballet, from the ones that were made for her. I took a camera with me for that one because they were moving around.

She was talking to the very young ones and they were shaking. You could see them, with excitement, that she was giving the ballets to them. My painting for that was so easy and so lovely. Do you remember she had that lovely young woman who was talking to her? I just loved that painting and the doing of it.

Victoria: You can just see the back of the young dancer as she's engaging with her.

Jenny: And also all "Scheherazade," and all the times that the Russian ladies would whip my calves to be a ballet dancer, and I didn't want to be. But when you're kind of Russian or something, you're going to have to do it.

Victoria: You felt almost a cultural connection to her?

Jenny: I felt very strongly with her because we...

Victoria: Do you speak Russian?

Jenny: Yes.

Victoria: Yes, you do. I probably shouldn't ask this question, but do you have a favorite amongst some of the portraits you've painted?

Jenny: Yes, Helen Garner.

Victoria: Helen Garner.

Jenny: Very much. Wonderful woman, wonderful. I'm so lucky ... to have ... Certainly Emily, I've got a package of them there I'll have to flow through and tell you. There are 20 faces, and things going.

Victoria: Jenny, painting you late husband Jack, when he was unwell, must have been one of the most difficult portraits you had to paint. It has such a warmth and luminosity about it, the portrait, a real intimacy about it.

Jenny: That was because we were doing, with Catherine Hunter, who did the documentary. And she was in the house all the time doing the documentary. He was sitting on the veranda. I mean he was ill. he had, you know, his ...

Victoria: facemask, oxygen...

Anyway, he was ill. But she brought ... There were two things. You know, I did ... I started drawing with him, or doing it and this would help with Tanya. We worked together on him, "You do Dad. You always do strangers, why don't you do Dad?" So we both kind of worked on it.

Then when it was finished, the guys came to take it to the Archibald, and she's caught it on the camera as it goes down, his picture. It's here now in my living room.

Victoria: He's sitting there as they're taking the picture, too -- the art gallery.

Jenny: Yes, all of that was very important. And I'm lucky, I share that with ... I've only got one daughter and I share it. But I must put David in, because he's her husband and I love him sometimes more than I love her. They're both so ... It's important to me.

Victoria: It has such a warmth. It almost has a light that eh ... a luminosity, the portrait, that it just seems to reflect your love and closeness.

Jenny: It is, all through that, all through. It's very difficult to me now to look at it in the documentary, because I remember so clearly that time, because it was down hill after that.

Victoria: And then of course the year after you did a self portrait, which was widely acclaimed.

Jenny: There's a story there because her documentary, it was Tweed Valley ... Gallery, and it's a beautiful one. It has -- what's her name, Olley?

Victoria: Margaret Olley.

Jenny: Yes, you know it's really, it's one, and they live close ...my family lives close to that, so Tweed Valley was good. I think the year past and we were having ... we wanted to see... it was my show, Catherine and the Tweed Valley. We had lunch outdoors, and as we opened the door, there's the documentary running and Jack's voice, so clear -- enormously strong and clear, he was talking. What we talked about now.

Tanya and I just grabbed our hands and were sobbing, I more so. I had my camera on my shoulder. More so ... You go to the place where you sit on the bulkhead and the documentary was going. I was sobbing my heart out, she took my camera and started photographing me crying. That's where it emanated from. It was real.

Victoria: Both your self-portraits that have been in the Archibald, I find, are so raw and honest. Both that work "After Jack," and also the work you did 10 years prior, "Each morning when I wake up I put on my mother's face."

Jenny: My mother's face.

Victoria: Which is wonderful, I think it reflects all of our feelings, often as we get older. Did you find it challenging, painting yourself?

Jenny: I hated it, and that's why I have it down below. Look, look, look. [inaudible]. My face. I pushed myself out because I didn't like it. Anna Akhmatova, a Russian poem ... Poetess, I've got books that thick of her work. [inaudible]

And also, another thing about that was at the time, in Russia, they could be killed for a poem. We wouldn't, we wouldn't care about anything like that. It was a bad time, Stalin's time, where there were really killings and stuff like that.

What I wanted to do was write what I thought, "My Tatar grandmother rarely gave me gifts." The intelligentsia memorized it, they'd keep it safe. In paper ... it would be very difficult for them. I wanted to do the same.

To memorize it, for me, I put it on, "My Tatar Grandmother rarely gave me gifts, but because she was da-da," and then I rubbed it off. It's white at the back, but the remnants stay here. Nine times, I think I did that, and then I stopped.

So the white, I sort of invented that it was ... snow. Also, it covered the fact that I didn't have a Tatar grandmother. It was all the story about that.

Victoria: Yes, yes. That were passed on.

Jenny: I just love...with a good heart, that I did with...I want to do the next one.

Victoria: Like the artist Rosalie Gascoigne, you didn't become a fulltime painter until your early '50s. Do you think being a late bloomer has been a help or a hindrance?

Jenny: I'd rather be younger and have more time. But I had such a good time with the other things that I was doing.

Victoria: You've been a finalist in the Archibald Prize, now 20 times. You won the Portia Geach Portrait Prize twice, and you also won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting.

Jenny: That was nice, that Luca and Anita Belgiorno-Nettis. He lives around the corner, and he comes in and he likes to look at what I've got on the wall -- on his bicycle. He's just down there, Luca. So he stomped up the stairs, looked at it, and he said, "Mine." [laughs], "Mine"

Victoria: This is Luca Belgiorno-Nettis?

Jenny: Yeah.

Victoria: Oh, really?

Jenny: It's in their living room.

Victoria: How important are awards to you?

Jenny: I like the money. [laughter] Because I have dependents. My grandchildren now, I really need it now.

Victoria: Which has been the most meaningful prize for you? Was it the Wynne?

Jenny: Oh probably. No, I just like winning. I think, you know, it just feels good ... for five minutes.

Victoria: Jenny, another field of your painting oeuvre is your genre paintings, small figurative works that you execute, usually in a series. You describe them as predellas or storyboards. You mentioned they're the subject of, "My fiercest attention and my worst nightmares."

Jenny: My current work had that title now, just now, at the [inaudible] Gallery. I wanted to use predellas, but I don't know whether we can.

Victoria: They usually feature your daughter and grandchildren?

Jenny: No, it doesn't ... it can be, because I showed in Canberra. Yes, it would be, I'm looking at them now. The Western Red Cedar, the cedar that I'm doing. What did you say? Anyway, whatever it was. It was interesting to me to use that. Even now, when I'm doing this current work, and it's so strongly not pictorial in any way, I still kind of feel that.

Where did it come from? I couldn't believe when I started doing the current work, which is coming up in the show. I didn't ask it to, but then I'm really pleased. In the beginning always I think, "That's horrible." And Jack screams from down there, "Oh, cut it out." [laughter] So there it was.

Victoria: Can you tell us a little bit about your current work?

Jenny: Well, it's the same going on. Sometimes when it appears and I know where it was, or it happened. I've had an interesting time to see what emerged in the new work that's surrounding me now. It's new -- I mean, obviously, but in time. But I'm quite interested in what's coming out.

Victoria: Jenny, going back to the genre works. In works such as "Red Shoes from Vinnies..."

Jenny: Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

Victoria: ...you painted Tanya, your daughter. They had, for me, quite a melancholic feel to them.

Jenny: Yeah, it was. She had Ross River fever. And I'd fly down every three month ... no, three weeks. Since I'm not a good grandmother or mother, or anything [laughs], I couldn't really care for children or babies, when they lived in Toowoomba, and she would do the cooking.

But what I could do was draw. I just sat there and drew. They're down below and it went into the drawing prize, the...

Victoria: Dobell.

Jenny: Dobell, yeah.

Victoria: And they have such an intimacy, too.

Jenny: Oh, it was. The "Red Shoes from Vinnies," she was just joyous then, but this bloody thing that she has, she suffers still from. It's very strong.

Victoria: The Ross River fever?

Jenny: Ross River, yes. Of course I gave it to her. There are six or seven of them, I can't remember, down in the bedroom there. Because it's so personal, and people wanted to buy it and there's no way. I keep it because everywhere they go to, there's always a buyer somewhere that it could happen.

Victoria: Are you featuring Tanya again in any of your work?

Jenny: Tanya? I'd like to. [laughs] She makes me like to. Because she thinks it's going to be ... because it was family, it was Jack and me. She feels that it's her time. She'll do it if she wants to do it.

Victoria: You have an extraordinarily wide focus in your field of painting, from landscape, abstraction, portraiture, genre painting. Does any particular field stand out for you?

Jenny: Not stand out, they belong to each other, I would think. I like doing both. There's one common thing is that the drawing starts, it starts with the drawing.

Victoria: They all feed off each other.

Jenny: They feed. Sometimes when I do it, it gives me surprises at the drawing stage.

Victoria: You once made the comment, "I've walked this country for 20 years. What happens in the paintings is what I feel and I am reinventing myself every time I face the canvas." Does this still hold true for you?

Jenny: Oh, yes. I wish I could go again, but Jack was ill. I think there comes a time when it stops, and I don't want to go backwards. I do, I would be very happy to, but it almost collapsed when I stopped three years ago. I don't know. I'm dying to go back.

Victoria: Do you still have the passion for painting?

Jenny: Oh, yeah. Oh, do you mean outdoors? Oh, yes. Any kind of painting.

Victoria: But when you face the canvas, do you feel that same urge and impetus that you had 20 years ago?

Jenny: You mean the same coming to that. Yeah. Since my studio's up top I often -- especially now, but before, too -- I'd go sort of three o'clock in the morning. See, the fairies were there very often.

[laughter]

Jenny: I was just sure they were here, but they weren't. Truly, in the middle of the night, I'd go and see what's cooking up there. It would drive Jack mad.

Victoria: Jenny, thank you for talking with us.

Interviewer: Victoria Hynes

Camera, light & sound: Cameron Glendinning

Video editing: Dr. Bob Jansen

Technical & assembly: Dr. Bob Jansen