One day, between COVID lockdowns, Queanbeyan-born artist Michelle Hiscock happened to be sitting near Don Walker in a Sydney cafe.
Hiscock had long been keen to paint a portrait of the singer-songwriter.
"He has written a lot of songs that remind me of my time growing up [in Queanbeyan]. And of course, the music of his first band, Cold Chisel, was the soundtrack that went with so many of those memories," Hiscock said.
But although Walker had lived near Hiscock in Sydney, she was too shy to approach him when she saw him about.
"He was quite forbidding - he always seemed to be deep in thought," Hiscock said.
Walker was having a meeting the so Hiscock wrote a note for him and gave it to the bartender to pass along before departing.
It wasn't too long before he called back and agreed to sit for her.
Hiscock entered the portrait, an intimate oil on prepared paper painting titled The Songwriter, in the Archibald Prize. Last year she made the Archibald's Salon de Refuses and she has a finalist six times in the Portia Geach Memorial.
Not only did The Songwriter make the Archibald finals this year, it also found a buyer - Walker's mother.
"That to me is a big accolade," Hiscock said.
Coincidentally, Walker's latest album, Lightning in a Clear Blue Sky, was released the day after the Archibald winners were announced.
Both Hiscock and her husband, art historian, teacher and critic Christopher Allen, have a long connection with Queanbeyan.
Allen is a descendant of John Gale, a politician and lay preacher who founded The Queanbeyan Age and was an advocate for placing the national capital in the Canberra-Queanbeyan region.
Hiscock's family have run a saddlery and apparel business in Queanbeyan since 1908.
"It's the fourth generation - my cousin runs it now."
Hiscock's interest in art began in Queanbeyan: she studied it for the HSC and spent a year in Japan supported by Queanbeyan Rotary Club.
"I've never seen so much art as in Tokyo."
Hiscock graduated in 1991 from the ANU School of Art where she studied drawing and printmaking.
Painting, she said, was not emphasised: there and elsewhere she said other fields were emphasised.
"It took a long time to acquire the skills I wanted."
She was mentored in this at the Adelaide Central School of Art where she also taught.
Hiscock has painted prolifically - with a particular focus on landscapes and, especially more recently, portraits - and had many exhibitions, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney.
Since 1998 she has also lectured at the National Art School in Sydney.
While it's been a long time since she lived in Queanbeyan, Hiscock said she intended to come back soon to the region to fuel her creativity.
"I plan to do some landscape painting in the area."
