Wollongong stencil artist Luke Cornish this week won the $20,000 Gallipoli Prize for a devastating depiction of those left behind to grieve the soldiers dead in war.

The prize marks a high point in the rise and rise of Cornish, known as E.L.K, who uses the tools of a street artist - spray paint, stanley knives, acetate sheets - to produce works which are now well regarded as a higher form of art (with a higher kind of price) than the street has traditionally produced.

In 2012 he became the first stencil artist to have his work hung in the finals of the Archibald Prize, for a portrait of the now late Father Bob Maguire.

He has since been a finalist twice more, and his stencil portrait of former prime minister Bob Hawke was acquire in 2013 by the National Portrait Gallery.

But it is the aesthetics of war - in street scenes more than portrait work - which may best define much of his work. .

In his Gallipoli Prize-winning work the portrait and battlefield come together, with an unknown soldier, gas masked and hooded, comforted by a woman, probably his mother, who will be left behind to feel his loss.

Soon he will leave her and he's crumpled, slumping into the inevitability of his own imminent destruction, and of her loss; she's just holding his dear hand one more time.

"[It's] everyone that have been killed in conflict," the artist told the Mercury.

"Whether that's an ANZAC at Gallipoli or a little boy in Gaza."

Cornish, 45, said it was an honour to receive the Gallipoli Prize, particularly as his grandfather was among the ANZACs who landed on that bloody beach in Turkey in World War 1.

His winning work was a firm nod to Michelangelo's Madonna della Pieta, which Cornish said he had reimagined to tap the "profound sorrow experienced by mothers who have lost their children to the ravages of war".

His work has been informed by numerous trips to the Middle East, including to Syria when that country was the world's most prominent war zone - first as an artist, then to help.

"The first couple of times I went to Syria were very much about me having an interesting art career just exploring, you know, getting out of my comfort zone," he said.

"But the last few times I went, I was working with a children's charity in Damascus and had a fundraiser over here raising money for orphans of the Syrian conflict.

"The last couple of times I went was more about giving back than taking away - because you realise when you get to a war zone, it's just full of ... people taking away.

"It just attracts these crazy people, whether that's people fighting or people just trying to help. It's hard to explain. It just attracts nuts.

"So yeah, I did want to give back a little bit."

With The Pity of War having reached the heaviest of the heavy, Cornish said he's now on to lighter themes - quite literally. His subjects in recent work are weightless, astronauts in their big puffy space suits, harking to a day when humankind was optimistic, and some of them can be seen on Wollongong streets,

"The work I've been doing around Wollongog is all astronauts," he said.

"It's just about doing something positive, putting out positive imagery. There's just so much negativity in the world right now.

"I sort of see astronauts as symbolic of where the planet could go if we all came together - you know, coming together exploring the universe as one."

The Gallipoli prize is run by Sydney's Gallipoli Memorial Club, which invites artists to respond to the broad themes of loyalty, respect, love of country, courage, comradeship, community, peace and freedom as expressed in the club's creed. Works do not need to relate to war or the Gallipoli campaign.

The 2024 Gallipoli Art Prize is on exhibition at 6-8 Atherden Street, The Rocks, Sydney until May 12.