Jenny Sages Each morning when I wake up I put on my mother's face

‘I wear [Russian poet] Anna Akhmatova’s words like a cloak shrouding my own identity,’ says Jenny Sages.

Traditionally in Russia, poetry is held in such high regard that during the Stalin regime a suspected subversive poem could attract a death sentence. Poets and their friends would memorise each new work to keep it alive, as recording it on paper would have been too dangerous.

‘To register Akhmatova’s work I would write and rewrite the poem as many times as it took to lodge it permanently in my brain. My own childhood memories have me reciting Aesop’s fables in Russian to grown-up visitors. My mother’s name was also Anna.’

Born in Shanghai in 1933, Sages arrived in Australia in 1948. She studied at East Sydney Technical College, the Franklin School of Art in New York, then with John Olsen and Mary White. After freelancing as an illustrator for nearly 30 years, she has painted full-time since 1985. Sages has won numerous prizes including the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 1992 and 1994. She has been represented in the Archibald Prize on eight previous occasions and is hung in this year’s Wynne exhibition.