Nicholas Smith, son of landscape painter Caesar Smith, was born in East Anglia. He began his artistic career shortly after leaving school in Peterborough, creating watercolours inspired by the wildlife in his native fens. During the 1980s and 1990s he exhibited widely across the Midlands and in London. In 1997 he moved to Cornwall, making the transition to oils in order to portray the vast skies and rugged coastline of the south west. Smith works from The Bank Square Gallery in St Just.