[2] She established her artistic prowess early on by winning the major category for oil painting in the 1909 City of Prahran's Art Exhibition Prize.

The group included Ruth Sutherland, Charles Wheeler, Dora Wilson, May Roxburgh, Percy Leason, Louis McCubbin, Penleigh Boyd, H. B. Harrison, and Frank Cozier.

[2] This was hardly her only venture overseas however, as she returned in 1927,[2] meeting fellow artists Pegg Clarke and Dora Wilson in Rome,[6] and narrowly avoiding World War II on her 1938 travels to Norway and Sweden.

[2] When the house was finished she lived there with her sister Winifred and had many fellow artists as guests, with former students and teachers joining her for plen air landscape painting.

[2] While Gurdon painted in an impressionist style similar to her contemporaries, she favoured muted blue and grey tones to capture the hills of the Dandenongs.