The plum tones of a new portrait of cook and food writer Stephanie Alexander - unveiled in Canberra on Wednesday - were inspired by a poem about ageing.
Alexander's portrait, by Tsering Hannaford, honours the much-loved Australian as she marks the 20th anniversary of her groundbreaking Kitchen Garden Program to help tackle childhood obesity while also increasing food literacy.
The inaugural National Kitchen Garden Awards are also being announced at Parliament House on Wednesday at 5pm.
Alexander, 83, for the first time on Wednesday saw her portrait hanging on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. The portrait was commissioned by the gallery with funds provided by benefactor Marilyn Darling.
She wanted purple to feature in her portrait as a nod to the 1961 poem Warning, by Jenny Joseph, with its famous line, "When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple".
"I think the portrait is really beautiful," she said.
"I feel it really is me. As I said before, it is a bit weird looking at a portrait of yourself where you feel you've really been captured.
She chose Hannaford to do her portrait because she believed the artist would capture her true personality, travelling four times from Victoria for sittings in South Australia. Alexander recalled the moment the portrait came alive as Hannaford painted her eye on the canvas.
"Suddenly, it became a real person," she said.
"It was a very, very odd and exciting moment."
Alexander was also quizzed at the gallery about the portrait and her career by children from Majura Primary School, which participates in the Kitchen Garden Program.
"I have visited Majura several times and I think you've got a fantastic kitchen garden," she told the children.
For two decades, the Kitchen Garden Program has, nationwide, supported nutrition, health, wellbeing and sustainability education across Australian primary schools.
Alexander said her dream was for children across the nation to be able to participate in the program which provides health education through engaging, hands-on kitchen and garden classes.
It has shown to improve food literacy and behaviour, increase good and vegetable consumption and strengthen student wellbeing and sense of belonging.
"There's tonnes of evidence to show what we do works. That the children become more interested, they develop new skills and it just needs federal funding," she said.
"We talk a lot, and the media talks a lot, about obesity and children going off the rails, community not involved. This program does all of at that and it isn't even hugely expensive to get started.
"The roughest figure we're talking about is employing one extra person in a school who would be responsible for making it happen and infrastructure, which is not hugely expensive and then an allotment of time in the week."
The program started in 2004, Alexander saying it was inspired by her own childhood.
Alexander is busy working on a new edition of her iconic cookbook, The Cook's Companion, which was first published in 1996.
"It's such a massive thing to undertake a revision, so I'm in the middle of that," she said.
National Portrait Gallery director Bree Pickering said Alexander's love of food combined with the Kitchen Garden Program had created "an incredible legacy".
"That is encouraging people to think differently about the way we eat, what we eat, the magic of growth," she said.
