As a child she had to change buses three times just to get to school in Lochinvar, and always thought the cool kids were from Maitland.

"My roots have always been in the Lower Hunter, and I just love the area. I'm an absolute Maitland tragic," she said.

Ms Nichols is the owner of Hunter Artisan Gallery & Cafe, which she started in 2017 after attending art school and realising smaller local artists were struggling to get their work into galleries.

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"I met all of these amazing people on the same journey and the one thing they all said was how hard it was to get your art into an art gallery for the first time, and how hard it was to get a start," she said.

"I thought you know what, I've got a building here that has amazing history and an amazing feel, so I decided I would turn it into an art gallery.

"It's all about promoting people. Primarily it's for people who have never shown their work in the public eye before, and it's a really cool thing for people to be able to see their art up on the wall."

Ms Nichols purchased the historic building, previously The Old George and Dragon, in 2009 and operated it as a fine dining restaurant for several years.

The historic building is a Maitland institution, being built in 1937 and awarded the fourth liquor license in New South Wales.

Ms Nichols' experienced tough times personally while running the restaurant, with one of her sons being diagnosed with cancer in the same year she purchased The Old George.

The family had to take time away from the restaurant going back and forth to Westmead hospital and he was given less than a 15 per cent chance of survival.

Miraculously, he survived and will turn 26 this year.

After a few more years of running the fine dining restaurant, the market in Maitland changed towards fine dining in favour of more casual restaurants, which made it tough to keep such a quality restaurant going.

Around this time in 2014, Ms Nichol's eldest son was diagnosed with melanoma and passed away in 2015 when he was just 36.

"He was just an amazing young man," Ms Nichols said.

It was in 2016 that Ms Nichols put The Old George on the market, headed off to art school and turned it into the gallery and cafe that it is today.

The gallery began supporting 30 local artists, and has grown to 60, along with regular exhibitions and openings.

"The gallery gives artists the opportunity to get their work out into the public eye," Ms Nichols said.

Ms Nichols originally moved to Maitland from North Rothbury in 2001 when her town planning consultancy firm, which she operated with her husband at the time, outgrew their humble beginnings.

The family moved to central Maitland and worked on major town planning projects like Huntlee and Gillieston Heights.

During her time in town planning, Ms Nichols joined the Maitland Business Chamber and in 2006 became its first female president.

Under Ms Nichols' leadership, the chamber's membership increased substantially and the amount of female members increased as well.

"It was a pretty good time in Maitland, I was president there for about four years and it was great, I loved it," she said.

Ms Nichols attributes the growth of the chamber to her more approachable outlook and variety of guest speakers.

"I introduced some guest speakers people who had really different experiences in life.

"It was more variety and we used to make it a bit of fun as well... I think the amazing things the committee is doing now is brilliant."

Ms Nichols family is all grown up and have moved around the Hunter region, with two sons living in Maitland, and her daughter and stepson in Singleton.

She is proud to call Maitland home, and likes that it still retains a country town feel and a nice vibrancy.

"I think because we're still at that lovely stage of not being a big city, we're still just basically a big country town that still has that big country town vibe.

"While I see Maitland is getting bigger and a bit rambly towards the edges, I think the feel of Maitland is just that - people will still talk to you on the street even if they don't know you," she said.

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