COVID-19 lockdown conveyed in Jaq Grantford's Darling Portrait Prize winner

The winning picture, titled 2020, is a photorealistic painting of the Melbourne artist looking directly at the viewer with her hands covering her mouth, and paintbrushes sticking out from her hair.

It represents the anxiety and separation that came with stay-at-home orders, mixed with relief that she had more time in the studio, Ms Grantford said.

"There was a part of me that just loved that, the sound of the world around us pausing for a little bit, but then it's very conflicting because people around you were suffering," she said.

"From those complex emotions and feelings that I think a lot of people had over COVID, so the hand represent the mask and the feeling and the expression in connection with COVID and then the hair is the artist side of it."

The portraitist and book illustrator said she was blown away to win.

"For a portrait artist it's extraordinary because it's the National Portrait Gallery, it's the pinnacle of portraiture in Australia," she said.

"The judges are like art rockstars, it's the director of the Portrait Gallery in London, portrait director of the portrait gallery here."

But the artist has a level of disconnection from her portrait, because shortly after she completed it in May 2021, she was diagnosed with cancer and lost her hair.

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"I learned very quickly that every second is so important and it's about the people around you and your connection in life," she said.

Ms Grantford has recovered from breast cancer but said she now looks quite different to the person she painted.

"I do look very different now. I lost all my hair and eyebrows and eyelashes and it's all growing back quite differently," she said.

"I'm a different person just more that I think I've grown internally from that the growth was starting anyway."

The way many people have interpreted Ms Grantford's art is relating to the "complexities of just living" and how COVID has changed everyone.

"I think that all of the exhibition to the thing that I noticed and I don't know whether this was intentional or not but there's a common theme of humanity," she said.

"A number of the paintings were about essential works and there were a few self portraits and some of the paintings I found very moving as well."

Ms Grantford will use the prizemoney to pursue the ancient practice of bronze casting, a process that can be prohibitively expensive and has no room for error.

"Just having the money makes a huge difference, because a single casting is in the thousands," she said.

"It gives me an opportunity I just didn't have otherwise."

She finished her first casting, a portrait of her sister, earlier in 2022 and hopes to exhibit her sculpture while also continuing to paint.

The winning painting was revealed at a dinner in the Gordon Darling Hall in the NPG Friday night.

Two works were also highly commended, Shadow Crown by Nicholas Hopwood and a portrait of novelist Alex Miller by Hong Fu.

The winning work is on show alongside 38 finalists at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra from Saturday.

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