This year's awards are being adjudicated by the director of Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, Suzanne Cotter.

Among those vying for the $50,000 painting prize is Sally Anderson, from the Northern Rivers region, who in the past two years has been a finalist in both the S.H. Ervin Gallery's Portia Geach Memorial Award for portraiture and the Art Gallery of NSW's Sulman Prize.

Peter Berner, well-established as a comedian and ABC TV host, is also a contender for the painting award. He has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize. Also a finalist in Muswellbrook's highly competitive painting category is Tony Costa, winner of the Archibald Prize in 2019 for his portrait of contemporary artist Lindy Lee.

Costa had previously been a finalist in the Archibald Prize three times, and has been a finalist in the Wynne Prize twice, the Dobell Prize for Drawing four times, and has also been a finalist in the Sulman Prize.

Newcastle-based Matthew Tome, formerly the head teacher of fine arts at the Newcastle Art School, is also in the running for the painting prize, along with Irish-born artist Michael Cusack, who trained in Newcastle and is the co-founder of the Byron School of Art, at Byron Bay.

Sally Stokes, who won the Muswellbrook Art Prize in 2021, is again a finalist. Her first solo show, held at Annandale Galleries in 2017, was praised by Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee.

Raphe Coombes, formerly of the Hunter Valley and now living in northern NSW, has become a finalist with his painting based on the small town of Wytaliba, which started as commune in the 1970s and was decimated by the bushfires of 2019.

Local artist Michelle Brodie's painting of her fourth-great-grandmother has also been listed as a finalist. Another local on the finalist list is Amanda Galbraith.

Twice previously a finalist in the Muswellbrook Art Prize, Lise Temple of rural South Australia is again included. Other painting prize finalists include Hunter-based Christopher Dewar, Newcastle-born artist Julia Flanagan, emerging artist Jo Langley of the Blue Mountains, Melbourne musician and painter Lucy Roleff, and contemporary Indigenous artist Sarrita King, of Darwin.

Scone's Teresa Byrne, Newcastle photographer James Rhodes, Newcastle artist Benjamin Gallagher and locally-based painter Jo Shand are among those in the running for the $10,000 prize for works on paper. Shand previously lived and worked in Sydney's inner-west, and has recently been travelling the west of NSW. Her work is titled Murrurundi afternoon. Shand is also a finalist in the prize's ceramics category.

Two works on paper by Melbourne multi-disciplinary artist Chelle Destefano, who won the Lake Art Prize at Lake Macquarie's MAC yapang gallery in 2020, have been selected in the pool of finalists. Destefano, who is deaf, explores deaf culture in her work and the history of oppression experienced by deaf people. One of her finalist works is titled A Deaf Lady's Letter to the World.

Alison Mackay, winner of the Gallipoli Art Prize three years ago, is also contending for the works on paper prize. She has been a finalist in the Portia Geach portrait prize seven times, and been hung in the Archibald and Sulman prizes.

Finalists in the $10,000 ceramics prize include locals Kara Wood, Nicola Bolton and Sharon Taylor. Sydney-based ceramicist Ebony Russell is also a finalist, with her work inspired by cake decoration. Winners of the prize will be announced on February 25 at the opening of the exhibition.

The Muswellbrook Art Prize began in 1958. One of its first winners was Fred Williams, who became one of Australia's most successful landscape artists, and was the first Australian to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Elissa Emerson, of the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, says the winning works will become part of the Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection. She says that the prize, which has been sponsored for almost three decades by Bengalla Mining Company, "has yielded an excellent collection of modern and contemporary" Australian art.