[4] At the age of 22, Smith was working in a post office where he grew to be friends with fellow artist Tom Boutis.
After seeing the Cézanne show, Smith resigned from his position at the post office and began reading extensively about art.
[citation needed] Later, he began to sit in on classes at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where the instructors would let him join in on the lessons and the criticisms.
Beginning in 1954,[5] he started taking official classes at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and studied painting, etching, and woodblock printmaking.
[6] According to Ronald Smothers, Vincent D. Smith's work "stood as an expressionistic bridge between the stark figures of Jacob Lawrence and the Cubist and Abstract strains represented by black artists like Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis.
In 1959, Smith won the John Hay Whitney Fellowship which allowed him to travel to the Caribbean for a year.
[8] Throughout his life, Smith attended various art schools but it was not until turning 50 he returned to college to earn an official degree.