Though it mightn’t be quite as well known as the Archibald, the 2018 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize is Australia’s richest prize for portraiture, with a grand prize of $150,000 for the winning artist!

Now in its 30th year, the prize is funded by The Moran Arts Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation established by philanthropists Doug and Greta Moran in 1988.

From over a thousand entries, this year’s shortlist of semi-finalists have just been announced…. and WOW, what a lineup! Portraits of well-known Australians such as Asher Keddie, Carla Zampatti and Reg Mombassa amongst the semi-finalists, across a diverse collection of life-like portraits in various mediums.

The judges of the 2018 prize are artist Louise Hearman, the former director of National Gallery of Australia, Dr Ron Radford AM and Greta Moran, Co-Founder and Director Moran Arts Foundation. ‘We saw some strange work, some interesting work and some strangely interesting work’ says Louise Hearman. ‘So much skill and time and emotion was evident in over one thousand entries. Ultimately a combination of skill and attraction, the ability of a picture to continue to fascinate us, was the deciding factor in choosing the semi-finalists.’

The finalists will be announced on Wednesday 17 October, with winners revealed on Thursday 1st November in Sydney.

Above, we share a selection of our favourite works to make the ‘semi-finals’ (strange to use that term in relation to art!?). The full list of semi-finalists can be found here!