Jan Williamson Jenny Morris - singer/songwriter

Born in New Zealand, Jenny Morris now lives in Australia where, for the last 15 years, she has worked as a solo artist. She has recorded four solo albums and has a new one in the pipeline. She has also worked as a backing singer and in 1985 toured the world with INXS.

‘I painted Jenny because she is a very, very talented young lady,’ says Jan Williamson. ‘She writes songs and has worked with people like Paul Kelly, INXS and Tim Finn. I always find it’s more exciting to paint people you admire.’

Williamson met Morris through Andrew Farriss of INXS who is a friend of hers. ‘I was going to paint him but my daughter said, “Paint a female”, so Andrew put me in touch with Jenny. We sat down, had a cuppa and I did a series of sketches and took some photos. Because she was working on a new CD there were scraps of paper with songs on them everywhere and I thought it would be great to have one of them in the background. The words in the portrait are for a song called Dressing gown. It worked as a good contrast with her dark hair.’

Born in Brisbane, Williamson now lives in Sydney. She has been painting for 27 years. Her portrait of surfer Tom Carroll was hung in the 2000 Sporting Portrait Prize.