A painter who was born in Port Elizabeth, and grew up in Durban. After a term in Medical School at University of Cape Town, he decided to pursue Political Science and Literature at University of Natal. He became involved in the struggle against the apartheid regime as a member of the National Union of South African Students and the Students Representative Council. In 1970 Sacks emigrated from South Africa and studied at Princeton, Oxford and Yale. While authoring several books of literary scholarship and poetry, he painted privately, mostly in notebooks – several of which accompanied his travels on foot in South America, Asia, Africa and Europe. He had his first solo exhibition in Paris in 2004. His works are now held in numerous private and public collections worldwide.

Critic and art historian Phyllis Tuchman teaches and writes about art, particularly sculpture. She has taught at Williams College, Hunter College, and the School of Visual Arts. She is an Editor-at-Large for the Brooklyn Rail.