THE Canberra visual arts community is in a state of excitement over the selection of three local artists into the shortlist for the $75,000 Archibald Prize, to be announced at the end of the month by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

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Stencil artist Luke Cornish, better known in Canberra as E.L.K., has been chosen for his black-and-white portrait of the controversial Catholic priest Father Bob Maguire.

Cornish, who moved to Melbourne several months ago, was a familiar figure around Canberra, the subject last year of a cover feature in Art Monthly Australia and in 2010 the winner of the National Stencil Prize for his portrait of poet-singer Saul Williams, which he based on a photo by “CityNews” photographer Silas Brown.

Two huge stencils by Cornish decorate the walls of the Knightsbridge Penthouse cocktail bar in Braddon.

Also shortlisted was a collaborative work by Canberra artists Frank Thirion and Gary Smith have been chosen for the joint work “Faceless men”. Thirion is a former winner of the now-defunct Canberra Art Prize, while Smith is a staffer at the Canberra Museum and Gallery.

Cornish, Thirion and Smith now face off a bevy of veteran portrait artists like Jiawei Shen, Gary Shead and Tim Storrier, and will no doubt be the subject of debate for the non-painterly aspect of their entries.

As part of today’s announcements at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was is that a portrait of actor John Wood by artist Raelene Sharp has been awarded the 2012 Packing Room Prize by gallery staff.