“This support lets me continue exploring how drawing holds on to fading landscapes." Matilda Smyth
Velarde is delighted to announce the winner of our inaugural South West Arts Graduate Award (SWAG). Matilda Smyth who completed her BA (Hons) Painting, Drawing & Printmaking degree at Arts University Plymouth was selected after gallery owners Matt and Fi Velarde visited the graduate show in Plymouth this month.
The award secures tailored mentoring and a place in an October 2025 group exhibition at Velarde. Through the SWAG Award, the gallery will choose a graduating student from Arts University Plymouth each year to develop a body of work for public exhibition and sale, with the founders personally guiding production, curation and audience development to offer a meaningful first platform.
This year’s winner impressed the panel with an emotionally resonant practice that maps the fading edges of memory and place through drawing, painting and low‑relief sculpture. “Matilda’s work shows a rare attentiveness to landscape and loss,” said Richard Kenton Webb, Subject Leader for BA Painting, Drawing & Printmaking at Arts University Plymouth. “Her careful mark‑making offers a stillness that invited the judges to look, and feel, again.” Originally from Norfolk and now based in Great Yarmouth, Matilda is one of only thirty artists accepted onto The Drawing Year postgraduate programme at the Royal Drawing School for 2025–26. Recent exhibitions include Dead End Conversations and the Artist’s Publications Exhibition.
