Cockatoo print flies in Sorrento

AWARD-winning Haddon artist Vida Pearson has added another honour to her collection.

The hand-coloured lino printmaker has won the best other medium category of the 2024 Sorrento Art Show for her work Adaption – Gang-gang Cockatoos.

“I’ve always loved and done prints of cockatoos for over 40 years, but I’d never done a gang-gang cockatoo because they’re quite tricky with their funny feathered heads,” she said.

“But I have friends at Birregurra who have them in their back garden in March when they come down for the hawthorn, and last year I had the opportunity to photograph them.

“They’re endangered and they’ve adapted to introduced species as habitat and food sources.”

Visitors to Pearson’s open studio have also reported seeing the gang gang cockatoos as close as the Wombat Forest.

Her award-winning linocut composition of a pair of the rare birds took about eight weeks to carve, colour and print.

Pearson has previously won first prize at art shows in Mansfield, Avoca, Marysville, and Leongatha, and has entered other country exhibitions in areas including Birregurra, Bacchus Marsh, Kilmore, Bright, Goondiwindi, San Remo, and King Valley.

She has won first place in the Sorrento Art Show other medium category before.

“You don’t enter to win the prize, but if you do, people notice that and they take you more seriously,” she said.

“Not many shows have a printmaking section, although there are a few, but other medium categories are an opportunity for printmakers to get their printmaking and linocuts out there.”

Pearson is part of the Hidden Gems studio group in the north of Golden Plains Shire and regularly opens her workspace to the public.