By day, she is a sales rep. At night, in the early hours of the morning, she paints. Figures forming from her fingertips.

He is an average man, a worker at Visy Board, a father. But when the pager goes off, he pulls on his boots and heads to the fireground.

They met in abnormal circumstances - she as the artist, he as the subject.

Table Top firefighter Jason Davis was headed back to the station when the radio call came in.

He and his captain had been on the Green Valley fire ground for 12 exhausting hours. Facing down one of the fiercest blazes even seen in the region.

It had been a long, hot shift. The Rural Fire Service's fatigue management plan mandated they leave.

And then the call came. The Morven crew had been hit by a freak fire tornado.

Samuel McPaul died at the scene and two other crew members were injured.

It was Mr Davis' first season as an RFS volunteer.

"That day is still very hard to swallow," he says.

"It still lives with me, it never goes away.

"We had to continue, which was pretty hard to do."

Earlier that day, the truck Mr Davis and his captain were in was rushed by fire. Its side scorched.

The pair was helping an excavator driver who was almost eclipsed by flames when dead brush and fire hit the truck.

"It was apocalyptic, very intense and very scary," he says.

"Later that arvo the incident happened on River Road..."

While Mr Davis fought flames in Jingellic, his parents' Corryong home was threatened.

But he couldn't help them. He had a job to do elsewhere.

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Very early into his volunteering, Mr Davis was confronted with the fierceness of flames and the reality of what volunteers risk when they help others.

But he continues to volunteer, and his wife Kassandra has since joined the brigade, because he knows it's a job that needs to be done.

"My dad has been a volunteer firey himself for 30-plus years, I've always been around it... and thought it was my time to step up and do the job," he says.

"You do it for the community, and the sense of helping someone else."

When Granya's Lisa Davis-Laidlaw (no relation) was a child she lost the ability to draw. Struck down with meningitis, she had to relearn to walk and talk.

Sitting on a rose-covered rug, she spent hours with paints and butcher's paper.

Recreating the roses, finger-stroke by finger-stoke.

Hands covered in paint.

Decades later, the artist still prefers to paint with her fingers. Caressing the canvas, in primal connection to her work.

"It's very organic, I almost go into a subconscious area of my brain," she says.

"I lose track of time when I'm doing it and just switch off from the world. All that exists is what I see on the canvas."

Davis-Laidlaw has tried other methods, but she can never quite blend as well using implements.

So she paints with her fingers, mainly at night when she can't sleep, adding details and finishing touches with a brush.

For decades painting was lost to her, but two years ago she decided to again take up the paints and reengage with her girlhood hobby.

It's only in the last year she's taught herself to paint portraits.

Davis-Laidlaw wanted to honour the community's every-day heroes in her first Archibald Prize entry.

The ones who deserve the limelight, but often shun it.

"Rather than someone famous I thought it'd be better to highlight someone deserving," she says.

"I wanted to highlight the fact there are lots of everyday heroes out there, true representations of people we should be exalting.

"Everyday volunteers are often overlooked ... People when they're asked to identify heroes, usually say someone of fame rather than someone within community.

"I think it's a terrible shame."

The self-taught artist sought out potential subjects online and eventually met Mr Davis.

"I was quite moved by reasons why he is a volunteer and how passionate he is about it," she says.

So over 170 hours the artist immortalised the firefighter, clad in his Table Top RFS uniform, in a portrait The Volunteer- Everyday Hero.

Mr Davis adores the final product but maintains the painting is about more than an individual.

"I don't look at it being just of me," he says.

"I look at it as recognising all volunteers across the board - RFS, CFA, SES, VRA - all the volunteers and emergency services; it's for all of them.

"I'm just sort of a figurehead."

Seeing the painting entered in such a prestigious award, alongside the portraits of many notable figures humbles Mr Davis.

"Volunteer don't go out looking for praise," he says.

"A lot of everyday people work everyday jobs but when the pager goes off and the time comes they put themselves in danger to help others."

As much as Mr Davis hopes the painting is named as a finalist in the awards, he's also torn - secretly hoping it will find its home back at Table Top Fire Brigade headquarters.

Finalists for the 2021 Archibald Prize will be announced on June 6.