"I delight in creating abstract works with objective text content, It's a bit like someone hard of sight putting on spectacles going from blurred to focused."
Nick Smith is a contemporary artist based in Scotland. Well known for his instantly recognisable, pixelated style, Smith experiments with creations at the intersection between picture and pixel, fine art and popular culture.
For over a decade Smith has honed his artistic style; his experiments with abstraction and collage started in 2011, with an assemblage of Warhol’s Marilyn. Using just colour swatches, Smith challenged himself to recreate the iconic image – this was the beginning of his artistic career, and distinctive style.
Through employing and experimenting with colour swatches, Smith is able to explore the intersection of image and word. The combination of language and visual allows a multi-layered exploration into contemporary cultural icons and art historical concepts; the text is often narrative, encouraging the viewer to look deeper than just the visual. The words sit below or in between the colour swatches, interrupting the blank space between the snippets of pigment. This added element of language subverts or compliments the accompanying image, drawing the viewer in - literally. From large-scale to micro, Smith’s works play with scale. The pixelated ‘image’ is only visible from a distance, whilst the words can only be read up close. This experimentation with perspective allows the viewer to interact with his works in a tangible way, provoking contemplation.
Since 2014, the artist has created and exhibited over 10 collections; the most recent being Polytheism (2023), Posed (2022), and Psycolourgy 2.0 (2021). His recent collection, Polytheism (2023) explored the devotion of sneaker culture. Through depicting tessellated images of iconic, rare, and exclusive sneakers, Smith explored this everyday object as a symbol of identity, culture, and personal expression.
Smith also produced a piece in conjunction with the celebrated Vermeer exhibition, held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in 2023. Commissioned by Philips, a long-term partner of the Rijksmuseum, Smith was invited to create a giant community artwork as a way to closer connect people to art, and to the work of Vermeer. Through a series of workshops held at the Catharina Hospital in Eindhoven and the Princess Maxima Centre in Utrecht, patients at these centres created the artwork through painting and signing separate colour chips. The resulting 192 colour panels were then collaged together, reimagining Vermeer's renowned Milkmaid (1658) in Smith's signature pixelated style. The finished piece is now permanently displayed at the Catharina Hospital.
From exploring sneaker culture, to reimaging the work of old masters, to the experimenting purity of colour and tone, Smith’s pixelated creations push the boundaries of artistic practise and expression.
Smith’s works are in collections around the world, and have been featured in high profile auctions such as Bonhams POP X Culture, gaining traction on the secondary market.