Peter Smeeth's portrait of Today show host Lisa Wilkinson has won the $1500 Packing Room Prize in this year's Archibald Prize.
The picture of the popular TV journalist, which shows husband Peter FitzSimons in the background, was given the nod by packing room boss Steve Peters in what will be his final duty before retirement.
Smeeth's work joins 42 other finalists in the $100,000 prize, among them Anh Do, who has been painting portraits for the ABC TV show Anh's Brush with Fame for two seasons.
Do's entry is a vibrant painting of Aboriginal actor Jack Charles.
Two other finalists in the country's highest profile art prize feature musicians - a portrait of Go Betweens founder Robert Forster by the artist known as "what:, and Jon Campbell's face-to-face images of Sunny Boys Peter and Jeremy Oxley.
Do, the popular comedian, artist and author of the bestselling book The Happiest Refugee, painted Charles for the latest season of Brush With Fame, which included interview-while-painting sessions with Ian Thorpe, Megan Gale, Samuel Johnson, Fiona Wood, Tina Arena, Kurt Fearnley and Rosie Batty.
His painting of Charles is described as being "oil on linen with unicorn hologram, dead insects found in garden and other mixed media".
It's Do's second time as an Archibald finalist, having been nominated for a portrait of his father, Tam Do, in 2014.
Lucy Culliton is a finalist with a portrait of the gallery's retiring head storeman Steve Peters called Finished Packing, while the sports world is represented by Kimberley Leutwyler's portrait of footballer Michelle Heyman.
Fellow artists are strongly represented with Nicholas Harding's John Olsen AO, OBE, Noel Thurgate's Homage to Peter Powditch, Ashley Frost's Janet Dawson at The Doorway to her Studio, Mitch Cairns' Agatha Gothe-Snape and Marc Etherington's Paul (Paul Williams In his Studio).
Among the finalists with self-portraits are Tsering Hannaford, Tony Albert, Vincent Namatjira, Vanessa Stockard and Robert Malherbe.
The announcement was made at the Art Gallery of NSW.
