Painter, sculptor, illustrator and commercial artist, Vic Cowdroy attended Fort Street High School until the age of thirteen when she became ill with scarlet fever. 'After she recovered, she left school and began studying art at East Sydney Technical College. At the end of 1925, aged seventeen, she was in her fourth year as a sculpture student and Rayner Hoff was calling her his "star pupil". Although primarily devoted to sculpture (portrait heads and small nude figures)' Cowdroy 'also did story illustrations; Hoff predicted that in both fields she might some day rival Norman Lindsay (q.v.), an artist whom she was said to admire profoundly. Yet even then, despite a common interest in drawing and modelling nudes', her 'work showed little direct Lindsay influence, being far more "moderne" and stylised'.
By the mid-1920s illustration had become Cowdroy's 'major interest' and she subsequently contributed illustrations to the pages of numerous Australian journals including: Aussie (ca.1925), the Bulletin (ca.1920s), the Home (ca. late 1920s and early 1930s) and several 'semi-salacious, "all-male" K. G. Murray publications' such as Man and Cavalcade. Illustrating two books of poems written by her friend Ronald McCuaig (q.v.), she produced 'fine, witty line drawings' for The Wanton Goldfish (1941) and Quod Ronald McCuaig (1946).
(Source: Dictionary of Australian Artists Online)
