VAS Artist of the Year Award
Melbourne artist, Paul McDonald Smith, (1975) has recently been named VAS Artist of the Year for 2001 at the historic Victorian Artists Society (Est. 1870) East Melbourne, the oldest and largest artists society in Australia.
This very prestigious award is granted by peer vote. The artist receiving the greatest number of votes for the standard of work exhibited at the Society throughout the year, earns the right to the distinguished title.
The winner is ultimately decided as all Finalists in the competition (27) gather to vote at the much awaited Artist of the Year Exhibition which opened on November 27, 2001.
The award was presented to Paul by Victorian Minister for the Arts, The Hon. Mary Delahunty, who officially opened the Exhibition on December 9, 2001.
Ms Delahunty, spoke very highly of the Exhibition and of the democratic voting procedure that gives all Society members a say in determining the Finalists. It is the Finalists who then record their preferences for the winner.
Paul is well known as an artist having practised as a professional painter all his working life. He is the current President of the Victorian Artists Society and he adds this important award to a long list of distinctions earned in Australia and overseas.
Paul is also very widely known for his tutorial and judging activities having served as Judge at the Camberwell Rotary Exhibition last year and at countless art competitions throughout Victoria and interstate. As an invited member of the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society Inc. he is also a judge of the renowned A.M.E. Bale Travelling Scholarship, Australias premier award for traditional painting. Featured in the volume 2000 Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century (Cambridge) Paul is one of only eight artists internationally to be admitted to the Honours List associated with that title.
Finding very little time to paint whilst remaining VAS President, one of Pauls most recent works was a portrait of The Late Sir Oliver Gillard, former Supreme Court Judge and Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, commissioned by the Bar Council of Victoria.