British-Australian contemporary visual artist Marcus Callum has won the Shirley Hannan Portrait Award, for his oil on canvas piece entitled 'Meg'.

Some of Australia's top portraiture artists gathered in Bega to celebrate the Shirley Hannan Portrait Award who was a gifted Bega Valley portraitist

The $50,000 art prize attracted entries from all over the country, including three from South East New South Wales.

Callum said the painting of 'Meg' portrayed her as "at that point of transitioning into adulthood".

"I was trying to convey that she's a bundle of mixed emotions," Mr Callum said.

"She's confident, anxious, angry, suspicious, confused, happy — all in the same moment,"

Trained in Sydney and New York, Mr Callum was a finalist in Australia's most well-known art prize, the Archibald Prize, three years in a row from 2011 to 2013.

He described winning the award as amazing and said the prizemoney will allow him to continue painting.

"The money in art is few and far between," he said

Standard of finalists improving year on year

Of the 35 finalists, 24 travelled from every state in Australia to attend the launch on Friday night.

Art critic and judge Dr Andrew Frost said he was honoured to judge the award, describing realist painting as one of the most exciting practices in Australian contemporary art right now.

Observers enjoying the finalists' work at the Bega Valley Regional Gallery ( ABC South East: Claire Wheaton )

Dr Frost said he deliberated over the finalists' pieces for some time, however he felt certain he had made the right choice in selecting 'Meg' as the winner.

"I'm going to guess that it's going to be a popular favourite as well as an artistically credible choice," Dr Frost said.

He described the painting as "flawless" and said he was searching for a portrait that of course had a good likeness of someone, but that he was looking for an artwork that resonated with him emotionally.

"We want it to tell us something about that person, or to use the person in the portrait to say something about the world we live in," he said.

Finalist Todd Simpson's piece 'Nice Garry' ( ABC South East: Claire Wheaton )

Bega Valley Regional Gallery Director, Iain Dawson, praised the quality of the entries, which he said represented the strongest line-up of the award's history.

"We're the richest realistic portrait prize in the country, and the third portrait prize after the Doug Moran and the Archibald Prize," he said.

Who was Shirley Hannan?

Shirley Hannan was a gifted Bega Valley portraitist and a generous patron of the arts. She funded the John Balmain National Award for Portraits and Figure Drawing from 1993 until she re-established it in her own name in 2002 with a substantially increased first prize of $15,000.

Before her death in 2005, Hannan doubled the prize purse to $30,000 and it was decided to discard the figure drawing component of the prize, concentrating on portraiture alone.

Portrait of Shirley Hannan: a gifted Bega Valley portraitist and a generous patron of the arts ( Supplied: Bega Valley Shire Council )

In 2012, Hannan's son Peter paid further tribute to his mother's memory with a generous personal donation of an additional $20,000, bringing the prize purse for subsequent awards to $50,000.

"She was very passionate about traditional portrait painting which was her real field of interest and her passion," Mr Hannan said of his mother establishing the award.

He described the finalists' work as very exciting, and said the standard was getting better and better every year.

"I think if my mother could be here today she would be smiling and nodding … it's exacting what she would have liked," he said.

The Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award is on display at the Bega Valley Regional Gallery until December 8.