That pencil was very quickly replaced with a brush which launched "a lifetime of learning" and a career as an internationally renowned artist.

Her talents were recognised by the region she describes as her country last week when a painting she says is probably only her second Australian landscape took out the Cabonne award.

Better known for her works featuring horses Ms Duncan's winning painting depicts a canola field between Manildra and Orange.

"I didn't expect to win it, it was a nice surprise, I was a bit overwhelmed and very pleased," Ms Duncan said.

"It's a great award, being an artist is not an easy way to make a living. It's a bit hit and miss, sometimes you do really well, sometimes you don't.

"I've done paintings I'm happy with but I've done others over the years that I think 'oh my goodness' but that's how you learn, you look for your mistakes and try to better with the next one.

"It's a bit like a game of football. You might go out and have a good game one week, not that I can play sport, and then go out the next week and not do so well. Art's a bit the same, sometimes your work turns out better than other times," Ms Duncan said.

Under the conditions of the competition Cabonne Council gets to keep Ms Duncan's work and in return she receives the first prize of $4,250.

"It's great that Council is putting this on. I think I got a pretty good reward for it, I'm happy. I think it's a win win," she said.

"I wanted (to paint) the brilliance of the canola, the morning sun light behind the gum trees. I tried to use a strong colour pallet, with blacks and yellow, with almost a design element," Ms Duncan said.

While painting horses is her usual passion and subject Ms Duncan said she also love's the landscape of Cabonne.

"I found it more of a challenge than I expected, but I enjoyed creating it," she said.

"Being an artist every time I drive I look at something and think of how I would paint it. I look at the clouds and the light and it was just a little place I liked (between Manildra and Orange).

"I'm not really a landscape painter. I can paint anything but horses are more passion.

"In the last few years I've ben working for Arab Sheiks in Qatar, Doha and Dubai and they like their horses in a desert landscape so I've had to learn a lot more.

"To be truthful I've only done about two Australian landscapes and I thought it would be easy, but it wasn't, I struggled with it but I'm really pleased I did it," she said.

Capturing the scene became a challenge for Ms Duncan's when the canola crop finished flowering.

"I drove in (to Orange) and the light was coming threw the leaves and the trees. The Canola jumped out at me, it was so good, I thought wow," she said..

A week later she returned with a Nikon camera and all of the canola was gone.

"There were little flashes of yellow but the crop had finished. I photographed it all, took photos from all over the place and had to paint the yellow from memory," she said.

Returning home to her studio, in what was once a butchers shop at the front of her mud brick home, Ms Duncan made meticulous sketches of the scene before putting down a first acrylic coat to begin a process that took her "probably a month".

"The first layer is transparent, you have to keep building up the layers, there's probably about four layers," she said.

Ms Duncan then blocked in the bigger areas before putting in the detail.