I'd just interviewed our very own Jill Stowell, art critic for this newspaper since 1985, over a luncheon spread of cheeses, sourdough, pickles and heirloom tomatoes, shared with her husband John.
We'd talked about her career and her commitment to arts and culture in this city, which led to her being awarded an Order of Australia Medal.
We discussed the painting of her portrait by Newcastle artist Jane Lander, which last month won the Newcastle Club Foundation Art Prize. As part of the club's 20-year anniversary celebrations of female membership, the theme of the annual prize this year was "a celebration of women of the Hunter, their achievements, contributions, strength, and leadership".
Lander thought of Stowell. She was in her mid-20s when Stowell first critiqued her work. "I wanted to give something back to her," she says.
I was interviewing Stowell about this sudden exposure, as art critics are usually more heard from than heard about.
As I prepare to depart, Stowell uses a painting term to tell me how unkeen she is on being the subject matter. She's never sought to be "in the foreground", she says.
For her, it's all about the art and the artists. That's the way it has always been.
Stowell started writing about Newcastle's visual arts on the recommendation of former Newcastle Regional Art Gallery director David Bradshaw.
She had joined the first intake of the gallery's volunteer guides. More than 100 guides were inducted: "There were a lot of doctor's wives," she says.
At a tea party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of gallery guides earlier this year, Stowell was one of three remaining from the original cohort.
When she started writing for the Newcastle Herald, freelancers dictated their articles by phone to a specialist typist, known as a copy-taker. Stowell would then visit the newspaper's offices before the article went to the presses and proofread it.
"We would argue a lot about commas and semi-colons," Stowell says. She reflects that colons and semi-colons are no longer in common usage, but I have included two colons for her in this article.
During the course of our lunch interview, it occurs to me later, Stowell asked me more questions than I asked her. She wants to talk about local galleries, recent and current exhibitions, and she wants to talk about painters - what they are doing and what opportunities they have for exhibiting.
In the 3000-plus articles that she has written about art for this newspaper, Stowell has documented the changing face of the local arts landscape.
"A lot of people I have known since their student days have gone on to be prominent senior artists," she says.
Artists whose careers she chronicled since their early careers include Michael Bell, Dallas Bray, Chris Langlois and James Drinkwater, as well as Lander.
Former director of Lake Macquarie's regional gallery, Debbie Abraham, says Stowell is a repository of local art history. Because of the longevity of her career, Stowell has "mapped" many artists' careers, Abraham says.
When the new Lake Macquarie gallery was built it celebrated its first 21 years with a "press book history", reprinting articles Stowell had written for the Newcastle Herald about the gallery's exhibitions.
"I think her contribution to the arts in Newcastle is extraordinary," Abraham says.
Abraham was a recent arts graduate when Stowell was first writing. Stowell reviewed her work and took an interest in the textile design start-up that Abraham co-founded, Tikat.
"I think she called me 'indefatigable' at one point," Abraham says.
She says Stowell respected that "we were all going out on a limb, it was all our own money".
Cooks Hill was the hub of art world "happenings" back then.
Stowell has watched galleries come and go, from the famed forerunner of commercial galleries in Newcastle, von Bertouch Galleries, to spaces run by Nick Mitzevich, who has gone on to become the director of the National Art Gallery.
Now, Stowell says, there is "a nice little nexus" in the city's east end, with contemporary art spaces Curve Gallery and The Lock-up and the "remarkable" Timeless Textiles, Australia's only dedicated commercial textiles gallery.
Collaborative artist-led spaces, such as The Creator Incubator and Hudson Hum, have "taken over" the art scene, Stowell says.
Stowell grew up in Melbourne, and in her early years fortuitously worked in the same building where the National Gallery of Victoria was then housed. Lunch breaks were an art feast, with Stowell particularly drawn to Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite painting.
Her love of art is nested with her training as a historian. Living in Europe for several years, when John was studying, both expanded Stowell's formidable knowledge base and refined it. Her interest in the Renaissance period became most specifically the Northern Renaissance movement, as she viewed the work of Nordic painters ("with all that gothic sensibility but Renaissance style") and Germans Albrecht Durer and Matthias Grunewald.
The Stowells lived in Germany across the border from the French city of Colmar, where Grunewald's most famous paintings on the Isenheim Altarpiece are held.
"Once seen you can never, never forget them," she says. "They're a bit surreal, a bit like Hieronymous Bosch but rather more realistic than that."
It is the provision of that kind of context that makes people stop in front of an artwork, Stowell says.
Her approach to being an art critic was not to act as a taste-arbiter, but to provide insights that would "in some way expand the experience".
"The trick with getting people in a gallery situation is to stop them walking on," she says. "Most people look at a work for something like three seconds."
A week ago, Stowell stood in front of the award-winning portrait of herself after it had been installed in the Newcastle Club following the exhibition of the art prize at Newcastle Art Space in Hamilton.
It was a first in Stowell's career, to be both subject and art critic.
Her verdict: "It's got very heavy impasto, and it's hung on a wall in the corridor facing the light. So, you can really see the thick impasto, it's almost a sculptural object."
Stowell says she was surprised when Lander phoned and asked her to sit for the portrait.
"She's always been a landscape painter as long as I've known her," Stowell says.
Plus, Stowell is used to being asked to judge art prizes, not pose for them - she is a past judge of the Newcastle Club Foundation Art Prize.
Stowell sat for Lander twice, once was in her kitchen wearing a top by designer Mirka Mora. Its big black spots became "more like a constellation" the more Lander painted.
Lander made a few versions of Stowell in various settings, but the 60cm x 60cm work that won the prize is devoid of any background, stripping it of context. Its focus is squarely on Stowell.
The portrait is simply titled Jill.
