Jane Sayle grew up on the south coast of Wellington. She has been a dealer in curios and ephemera, an art writer and reviewer, a lecturer in the history of New Zealand visual culture and a traveller. In 2021, collaborating with Catherine Bagnall, she published On We Go, a book of poems and paintings exploring personal connections with the natural world in the context of the feminine sublime. Their second collaboration, In the temple, was published in 2023.