Nick Smith’s newest print release with RHODES, After Hours, is available to buy from the Xth of March at rhodeseditions.com.
While the artist has approached the deconstruction of Nighthawks before, in 2020 for his exhibition Pioneers, Smith describes the making of it in 2025 as starkly different:
“I realised I couldn’t just replicate what was in the painting… I had to reflect how it felt.”
Nick Smith holding After Hours
Unlike his 2020 work, Smith has decided to reinterpret Nighthawks both into an original collage and as a print edition of ninety-nine. Now it is possible to purchase his statement deconstruction at an accessible price point and with a perfected colour palette.
The giclée print features a screen-printed overlay gloss that recreates the depth seen in his original paint-chip collages. The gloss enhances the colours while adding a luxurious shine and bringing it beyond a standard giclée.
After Hours gloss being added
The colour change is the most important difference between this iteration and the previous. After Hours features 620 colours, each one chosen by the artist to truly represent what Nighthawks means to him:
“The diner’s glow wasn’t just warm, it was oppressive… The darkness outside wasn’t just black – it was deep green, brown, blue… The woman’s dress? Not just red, but the centre of gravity.”
The colour changes create a very different artwork, with a personal addition through the words below the colours. Following his process of Psycolourgy, associating colours with specific language, Smith assigns each individual chip its own word according to his own systems of naming.
It is this process of Psycolourgy that links this iconic American deconstruction to a previous one, American Gothic. Without specifying what it is, Smith hints at an Easter egg linking the two works. This was inspired by the placement of the originals, as when you stand at the right spot in the Art Institute, you can see both pieces at once. As the artworks individually represent human interaction, Smith is mirroring this in the hidden connection between the two pieces - something that “if you can view both my prints together, you might just spot it.”
