After reading an ABC article on Australia's oldest Indigenous man, artist Leslie Sharpe knew he wanted to meet Ngarla elder Stephen Stewart and paint his portrait for the national portrait competition, the Archibald Prize.
He said reading the article about the Karajarri Nyangumarta man helped him "understand" a bit about Mr Stewart's life.
"I got out of bed and went to my wife and said, 'I'm going to enter the Archibald, and I'm going to see if I can connect with Mr Stephen Stewart,' and that's how it started," Mr Sharpe said.
Warning: Readers are advised that this article contains the name of an Indigenous person who has died.
Mr Stewart was born on Pardoo Station, in WA's Pilbara region, and nicknamed Number Two from his time running Yandeyarra Station alongside the late Peter Coppin, who was known as Number One.
He is a senior lore-man, and while his exact age is unknown, he is thought to be Australia's oldest Indigenous man, having lived for more than a century.
"We have to follow our lore — lore makes you strong and is why I am still alive," he told the ABC last year.
Like many Indigenous people born in the early 20th century, Mr Stewart has no birth certificate, so the only record of his age is an engraving on a windmill at Wallal Downs Station, around 300 kilometres from Broome that reads: Stephen Stewart, 1918.
But Mr Stewart has said he remembered making an engraving as a child when he began droving cattle along the Canning Stock Route to Meekatharra, so it's unclear whether 1918 is his birth year or simply the date of the engraving.
"It was wild country back then … [we were] proper bushmen," Mr Stewart said last year.
"There was only one horse in the lead, ridden by a white man, then the rest of us were walking, driving a big mob of cattle from behind … and I got nothing for it."
When the interstate border to Western Australia reopened in early March, Mr Sharpe, who lives in Martinsville in New South Wales, boarded a plane destined for Perth and then another for Port Hedland, where he met Mr Stewart and his family.
"It was incredible ... my late father was born in 1921, and in a weird way, it was like meeting up with my dad. He was just such a warm person," Mr Sharpe said.
"We shared a lot of stories ... I'm originally from Africa and grew up on a farm and also knew something about cattle, and so we had lots of little stories on cattle and all that sort of stuff. It was just wonderful."
After two sittings in Port Hedland, the Stewart family took Mr Sharpe out to Yandeyarra — around 140 kilometres south-east of Port Hedland — to show him the community.
"I was shooting landscapes because I wanted to show my family where I was, and one of the shots I got was two little bits of hills into the distance, and I took that, and I painted that into the reflection of the glasses," Mr Sharpe said.
Once he returned to Martinsville, Mr Sharpe had only around three weeks to build the frame — which was wider than it was tall to accommodate the Akubra brim — and complete the portrait ahead of the submission deadline.
"I loved it so much I was up at 3:00 every morning, because if I didn't do it, I would never have finished," Mr Sharpe said.
The completed painting measured 1.8m by 1.4m and weighed 45 kilograms. It's called The Oldest Lore-Man.
Mr Sharpe said painting Mr Stewart's portrait was a highlight of his career.
"It was one of the nicest things I've done in years. I mean, really, I've had a very fortunate life and done a lot of amazing things but this is really up there with the best I've done in my whole career," Mr Sharpe said.
The 2022 Archibald Prize finalists will be announced on May 5.
