A CANBERRA artist has won the $15,000 Best in Show in the sixth Holmes Prize for Excellence in Realistic Australian Bird Art 2022.

Frances McMahon, the only entrant from the ACT, was judged first among 35 finalists selected Australia wide for the prize, founded by Gary Holmes and his wife Margaret Anderson in 2015 and is run by the Friends of the Regional Gallery in Caloundra.

McMahon’s winning work “Showing Off (Sulphur-crested Cockatoos)” took 168 hours to complete. Developed over many years, her technique consists of airbrushed liquid acrylic backgrounds, with the main work completed in watercolour and gouache.

Although she has lived in Canberra for most of her life, McMahon was born in Armidale. She has been painting birds since age five and sold her first painting when she was 14 to Paul Ashton Delprat, principal of the Julian Ashton Art School.

Guest judge Peter Marsack said of her work: “It’s a faultless painting. Its technique is spot-on. The birds are lively, lighting is wonderful and very tricky. The structure of the birds is exactly right, the habitat is excellent.”

McMahon says of her cockatoos: “These two characters captured in the last rays of the afternoon sun, were raucously screeching and fanning out their spectacular yellow crests in a gum tree close to my balcony.”

The exhibition is at Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve, Maleny, Queensland.