Manifold's life-sized portrait of actress Leeanna Walsman is one of 30 pieces in the running for the $150,000 prize.

The piece took almost two years after an immersive two days in the Australian actress' home town of Sydney.

"We hung out for two days and at the end of the two days, I did a two hour-long black and white study," Manifold said.

"It's 195 centimetres tall - it's actually life-sized for her I believe, or just a little bit short of 168 centimetres.

"I started just before COVID so after the two years I've been adding bits to it and taking bits off... it's evolved a little bit since its first iteration."

It's not the Camperdown-born artist's first listing for the prize; he thinks he's been in it "maybe three times".

"It's amazing but you've just got to focus on doing the work," he said. "If you sat back every time you got into something you wouldn't get much work done.

"However the exposure you get from being in art prizes like this is fantastic. It's almost like putting your business card on the wall."

Manifold's latest show at the Warrnambool Art Gallery showed a series of landscapes across Warrnambool and the south-west.

But portraiture is also a big part of his work.

"Generally in Australia artists are usually known as a portraitist or a landscapist, but there's a lot of people who cross that divide regularly," Manifold said.

"There's two reasons I do both; one, I don't want to restrict myself into just being one kind of artist. I don't want to be seen as a portraitist or landscapist, I just want to be seen as a good artist.

"The other thing is my landscapes really, in essence, are all about people and the human condition.

"So for me, it's just it's another way of looking at people and the way we are, our intricacies, and how we think and that sort of thing.

"It's a different way to study people doing portraits. I wouldn't say it's sort of less metaphorical, so to speak, but it's more straightforward.

"I think with landscapes, the metaphors in there are all the the objects that I use to replace humans."

Crossley artist Anne Middleton's portrait of her mother Elsa Middleton was shortlisted as a semi-finalist in the Doug Moran.

The piece 'Elsa Middleton: wife and mother of artists' explores her mother's sorrow and heartbreak after her husband of 54 years Max - Anne's father - passed away.

"Clever, charming, and artistically gifted in her own right, my mother Elsa was the epicentre of our artistic family," Middleton said.

"Born in 1937, Elsa - a canny businesswoman - cast her keen, critical eye on the paintings of my father Max Middleton, and together they managed his successful career.

"My childhood was a sanctuary full of love, flowers and the aroma of mum's home baking, which was instrumental in nurturing my love of beauty and culture, and inspired my own career in art."

She describes her paintings not as photographic representations of a face, but rather as an exploration of "the hidden drives and emotions that define the soul of a human being."

"The tightened muscles of stress, pain, love and laughter shape the face I see.

"My portraits can be seen as maps of the life experiences which form the landscape of my subject.

"My portraits are complex and emotionally charged, like the private and personal drives that forge us all."

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