Love never sits still in real life

IT sounds like a plot line straight from her hit TV show.

Australia's TV darling Asher Keddie returns to the singles market post-divorce and sits for a portrait by a handsome young artist.

The pair bond over the course of the sitting and, by the time the paint dries, painter and subject are head over heels in love.

Such is the whimsically romantic tale behind the new man, Vincent Fantauzzo, in Keddie's life following her 2011 divorce from husband of five years Jay Bowen.

Fantauzzo joined Keddie on the red carpet at this week's GQ Man of the Year awards in Sydney.

Glowing in red, Keddie spoke for the first time about the blossoming relationship, revealing it was celebrity chef Matt Moran who orchestrated their first meeting and that Fantauzzo knew nothing of her TV background.

"We knew next to nothing about each other to begin with," Keddie said.

'I knew he was an artist and I knew of his work. But that was it. He didn't know who I was. I don't think he had seen any of my shows."

Fantauzzo is somewhat of a celebrity in the art world, having painted Heath Ledger, Matt Moran, Australia star Brandon Walters and most recently Keddie for the Thirty Portraits in Thirty Days series.

The Melbourne-based painter is also a two-time Archibald Prize People's Choice Award winner - for his famous portrait of Ledger in 2008 and Walters in 2009 - and last year he won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize for his portrait of Baz Luhrmann.

It is understood Fantauzzo recently separated from wife Michelle (they have a two-year-old son, Luca) while Keddie - who married Bowen in 2007 - split amicably with the rocker last December.

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