"There is no other printmaker in the world who prints like he does. There's no comparison," says Keith Howard, the head of contemporary printmaking and research at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.
A visionary, a genius, a craftsman like no other ... The accolades have poured in for a printmaker with a difference, writes Melinda Ham.
Master printer Paul Smith seems something of an anachronism in this age of instant digital reproduction. From a studio beneath his house on Scotland Island, he makes limited-edition prints of prominent Australian artists' work using a painstaking process.
He spends up to three months on each print, cutting plates by hand, matching colours and printing on a 50-year-old hand-operated press, one sheet at a time.
Artist David Boyd has worked closely with Smith on prints of three of his paintings. The most recent collaboration, Requiem for the Birth of a Nation, will be for sale, literally hot off the press, next month.
"Paul is very bold," Boyd says. "He breaks all the rules and conventions and yet he's a master printer, an expert craftsman, which is the highest accolade you can get."
In a print of Margaret Olley's Still Life at Rushcutters Bay, Smith made 12 plates and used 90 colours. It was the most technically challenging and emotionally taxing print he's ever done.
"The painting was saturated with colour and Margaret wanted every detail to be exactly right," he says.
As Smith explains his work, it becomes obvious that what he does goes far beyond recreating someone else's painting. His technique, honed over 25 years, is an art form in itself. That's reflected in the prices his prints achieve. An Olley print sold recently for more than $11,000.
"There is no other printmaker in the world who prints like he does. There's no comparison," says Keith Howard, the head of contemporary printmaking and research at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. He was one of Smith's teachers nearly three decades ago. "Paul has a vision, a certain degree of insanity verging on genius ... he thinks outside the realm of possibilities."
Smith's portfolio includes prints he's done with Arthur and David Boyd, Gary Shead, Charles Blackman, Euan Macleod, Wendy Sharpe, Ben Quilty and Frank Hodgkinson. Because of their quality and limited number, the prints are an investment in their own right, says the art agent Justin Coombs.
In a recent collaboration this year, Smith and Macleod began working on a print of Macleod's painting White Heat, but they introduced new colours and textures and ended up creating a new work that Macleod entitled Gabriel. It's this kind of creative work that Smith says he'd like to do more of in future. Next time, Macleod says, he will only work from sketches and create an original print with Smith.
The New Zealand-born Macleod has worked with other printmakers, but says the difference is that Smith pushes printing techniques to their limits to create an exciting artwork in its own right.
"When I'm working with Paul, I'm being led by my subconscious," says Macleod, who won the 1999 Archibald Prize with a self-portrait. "It's a process of surprise, chance and risk."
The astounding number of colours Smith uses in one print and his ability to visualise how to separate them onto so many plates is his unique talent, Macleod says. "I've done etchings with three or four colours before but never 20 times that. It allows a lot more subtlety of colour and tone."
Smith developed his obsession with colour in Suva, Fiji, where he was born into a fourth-generation Anglo-Fijian family. "I remember the intense, rich colours and light."
Smith moved to Queensland as a teenager, but says the harsh natural environment temporarily shut down his creativity. "There'd just been a big drought. The red dust was everywhere. The landscape was so shocking I thought I'd died and come to the arse-end of the world."
He received little encouragement from his family, who thought he should pursue a "real job". He went to Seven Hills Art College in Brisbane and then secured a job at the Sydney College of the Arts, now part of the University of Sydney. While there, he got his first commission to print Arthur Boyd's work.
Smith says he was "trembling like a leaf" when he first met Boyd, but that the elder artist immediately set him at ease and was very supportive.
"I try to involve the artists as much as possible," he says. "It can't just be a reproduction with no feeling. I really put my heart and soul into it. It's a combination of two talents."