Cecilia Smith is an Australian oil painter from Sydney Australia, specialising in portrait commissions and caricatures.

After an extremely chequered career in Music and commercial display and props Art (amongst another things), I have embarked on a full-time career as a painter.

I was trained in Fine Arts in Sydney Technical colleges, starting with Meadowbank TAFE, then a couple of years studying and modelling for Dick and Philip Ashton at the Julian Ashton Art School in The Rocks, Sydney, and finally receiving a Diploma in Fine Art at Penrith TAFE.

In between these adventures in Art, I put together a career singing in a variety of Sydney bands throughout the 80s and 90s.

This return to a visual form of expression is for me, a return to my most primal language, and a lifetime habit of image-making that never left me all through my Music career. From the earliest patches of memory, my obsession has been human beings. I never tire of the features of their faces, and I marvel at the subtlety of how planes can be arranged to form a distinct and infinite likenesses; no two on Earth are ever the same.

The human being is the ultimate canvas and sculpture in one. As people, we drive the flesh and bone mask that we inherited with the intellectual and emotional fuel and mechanisms which we develop. This is perhaps the most critical principle that forms the individual’s uniqueness. We in effect, create our own images, and it is my compulsion to catch people in that creative act.

Education:

2003

Bachelor of Media (Print Production), MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY SYDNEY, NSW

1994

DIPLOMA OF FINE ARTS, PENRITH COLLEGE OF TAFE, PENRITH, NSW

1981

- OPEN STUDY / NON-AWARDED, JULIAN ASHTON SCHOOL OF FINE ART, The Rocks, SYDNEY, NSW

1978

Certificate in Fine Arts, MEADOWBANK COLLEGE OF TAFE, MEADOWBANK, NSW

Exhibitions:

1987 Group Exhibition Cafe Latte Newtown "Oddities"

1994 Penrith TAFE - "New Stuff"

1997 Group Exhibition Wentworth Falls

2020 Group Exhibition "Solstice" Tin Shed Gallery Glen Innes

2022 Group Exhibition "Hmm That's Interesting" Studio Gallery, Gosford Regional Gallery

2022 Finalist, Gosford Art Prize, Gosford Regional Gallery

2023 Finalist, ‘Bald Archies’ Caricature Travelling Exhibition (Portrait of Dr Kerry Chant - SOLD)

2024 Finalist, ‘Bald Archies’ Caricature Travelling Exhibition (Portraits of Renee Geyer and Michaelia Cash)

2025 Finalist, ‘Bald Archies’ Caricature Travelling Exhibition (Portrait of Senator Lidia Thorpe)