Nick Smith: colour, language and the things we value

Nick Smith is a Scottish artist whose collages ask viewers to move between recognising an image and reading its parts. From a distance, a grid of colour chips resolves into a face, an artwork or a familiar object. Closer inspection brings the words beneath those chips into focus, changing a visual encounter into a narrative one. His official biography traces the approach to a 2011 reinterpretation of Andy Warhol's Marilyn, an early step toward the combination of image and language that runs through his later work. Artist biography.

Colour as a writing surface

Smith studied product design and worked in commercial interior design before becoming a full-time artist. In a gallery interview, he describes a practical turning point: preparing for his 2015 exhibition, he began printing his own chips instead of relying on commercial Pantone swatch books. Making them himself opened both the palette and the space beneath each colour to his own choices. Text could now be composed for the image, rather than inherited from a manufacturer's label. Artist interview.

Psycolourgy, his 2015 solo exhibition at Lawrence Alkin Gallery, reworked recognisable paintings through this visual system. Paramour followed in 2016, bringing romantic and erotic literature into conversation with images of the body. Together, these projects show that the chip is more than a consistent graphic motif: it allows the source image and the accompanying language to develop different, sometimes competing associations. Exhibition history.

Familiar images, unfamiliar stories

Pinched, shown at RHODES in 2019, focused on stolen art. Its subjects included Vermeer's The Concert and Munch's The Scream, supported by research into the circumstances surrounding thefts. The series considered how a work can remain prominent in cultural memory even when the physical object is absent from public view. It also continued Smith's interest in the relationship between cultural importance and financial value. Pinched exhibition.

Everyday loyalties supply another recurring subject. Psalms, presented by Nelly Duff in 2018, paired condiment imagery with rewritten biblical texts. Polytheism developed a related idea through sneaker culture in 2023, using language of devotion to consider shoes as markers of memory, affiliation and desire. Reading the words matters: the depicted product is also an entry into the values and attachments around it. Psalms · Polytheism.

Following the work across media

Original collages and editioned prints carry this shared vocabulary through different physical processes. RHODES documents numerous giclée editions with a screenprinted varnish layer, alongside other approaches such as the foil and letterpress used for Heaven. A collector can follow an image or exhibition theme across the catalogue while still recording the exact medium, format and proof designation of each object. Those distinctions preserve the relationship between the underlying idea and the way a particular work was made. Publisher's edition archive.

Collection guides and release records

• Nick Smith: 2015–2025 book configurations: three standard covers and their three collector-print packages.
• POOL DIARIES originals and the PARADISE print: the fourteen named originals, distinct physical formats and the print’s separate buying allocations.
• RHODES edition listings: explore Smith’s editions through the publisher’s artist catalogue.
• Nelly Duff’s PSALMS archive: preserve the distinction between PSALM 30’s ordinary numbered edition and its artist’s proofs.
• Beautiful Shambles: a separate route for Smith’s collaborative and word-based projects, beyond RHODES’ print inventory.