Making more than art, VE helped kickstart Maya's future

Through RMIT’s Diploma and Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts, Maya built more than a portfolio, she’s built her future. Now jumping into the second year of her Bachelor of Fine Arts, she's secured dream career opportunities and is making a name for herself.

For Maya Donaldson, her journey to higher education got started with a love for making art and a Diploma of Visual Arts. Her last year studying within Vocational Education (VE) was remarkable, winning the CoVE Creative Industries Award at her Graduate Exhibition, Thirty-Eight Spaces and assisting the painting of the Building 94 community mural.

Cake, 2025, Photo by Maya Donaldson

Since having completed both the Diploma and Advanced Diploma of Visual Art, Maya is now set to start her Bachelor of Fine Arts, entering directly into second year, a testament to her dedication and the amazing work she produced throughout her studies in VE.

"Going straight into second year is going to be a challenge," Maya acknowledges, "but I believe it is an important undertaking."

It's the kind of quiet capability that has defined her studies from the start.

With classes every day across both the Diploma and Advanced Diploma, over the last two years Maya has thrown herself into her craft, working across an extraordinary range of mediums, from textiles and soft sculpture to lino printing and lamp-making, all while discovering her new favourite paintbrush (The Filbert shape) and building community with her fellow ‘2025 AD Dips’.

Highlights from studying Diploma and Advanced Diploma include getting to make art every day!

Her graduating body of work, shown as part of the Thirty-Eight Spaces 2025 graduate exhibition, centred on a subject close to her heart, food. She produced multiple series, including a range of soft sculptures titled ABC, representing Apple, Bread and Butter, and Cake, functioning as a kind of self-portrait, exploring Maya's personal and complex relationship with food.

Apple, 2025, Photo by Maya Donaldson

Bread and Butter, 2025, Photo by Maya Donaldson

“It was an interesting challenge and fun experience to sew from a sculptural angle. It involved a lot of problem solving, working out how to make 3-dimensional shapes from soft flexible materials. I enjoyed going to op shops to find fabric and thinking what could be done with it; using hessian to create the rough crust of bread, or lace as icing for the cake.”

Brightly coloured and organically shaped, the dolls carry a warmth that is quietly complicated by their unsettling blank stares and humanoid features, while they sit comfortably on their little handmade chairs.

They convey a sense of discomfort and anxiety, mirroring my physical reactions to, and feelings surrounding certain types of food.

Alongside the sculptures, her food series included a lino cut installation examining food through a social lens, reflecting on the Australian Healthy Eating Food Pyramid to explore ideas of community, nutrition, food inequality, and labour. Each character in the print series representing one of the pyramid's four food categories. They’ve been stacked together to form a whole, reflecting how central food is to human connection and identity.

Adherence to the Outdated Food Pyramid Dietary Model (Iteration 1) (Detail), 2025, Photo by Maya Donaldson

“There was no brief whatsoever for my final specialisation assessments, which at the beginning was quite daunting!”

Maya pays thanks to her supporters and teachers throughout her VE studies, particularly Janelle Low, a VE Photography and Visual Arts teacher. Despite teaching a class Maya didn't take, Low made time outside of a packed schedule to teach Maya how to use a camera, to professionally document her work (as seen within this article).

"I am forever grateful," Maya says, "and hope to continue to work with them."

Maya’s studies are a reminder that Vocational pathways are a unique journey, and for some, a powerful launching pad for what comes next.

Maya will be showing her first solo exhibition at Daylesford Convent Gallery from October to November 2026, showcasing her current collection of works including her paper lanterns, Adherence to the Outdated Food Pyramid Dietary Model’ ’lino prints, and her soft felted sculptures. She will also showcase some of her newer works.

With a Bachelor of Fine Arts now ahead of her, Maya is proof that when hard work meets the right environment, remarkable things follow.

Learn more about the Diploma of Visual Arts and the Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts at RMIT.

Banner: Adherence to the Outdated Food Pyramid Dietary Model (Iteration 1) (Detail), 2025, Photo by Maya Donaldson

Story: Jas M

17 March 2026

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