Del Kathryn Barton has won this year's Archibald Prize for a painting that celebrates the love she has for her two young children.

The Sydney artist won the $50,000 first prize in Australia's most coveted portraiture award for You are what is most beautiful about me, a self portrait with Kell and Arella.

"This painting celebrates the love I have for my two children and how my relationship with them has radically informed and indeed transformed my understanding of who I am," Barton says.

"The title of the work – you are what is most beautiful about me – alludes to that utterly profound 'in-loveness' that all mothers have for their children.

"Both my children have taken my world by storm and very little compares to the devotion I feel for them both. The intensity of this emotion is not something that I could have prepared myself for.

"The alchemy of life offered forth from my inhabitable woman's body is perhaps the greatest gift of my life," she says.

According to the Art Gallery of NSW, Barton is known for her "vibrant, figurative imagery" and much of her work is "self-referential".

This is Barton’s second nomination for the Archibald Prize. She entered last year with a painting of art dealer Vasili Kaliman.

Born in Sydney in 1972, Barton has a Bachelor of Fine Art from the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, where she taught for three years until 2003.

She was a finalist in the 2007 Dobell Prize for Drawing.