Joondalup Gothic was an important work for Nicholls, representing a new direction in his practice that saw him move away from portraiture-based work, instead attempting to evoke distinctive qualities of the Western Australian landscape in his signature, highly stylised illustrative manner. An intricate ink rendering of a paperbark grove on the banks of Lake Joondalup created slowly over several weeks, the work was an attempt to aestheticise the uniquely harsh and haunting qualities of the south Western Australian environment. It was the first in an ongoing series of depictions of the few remaining swamplands around Perth – residual traces of a once-vast, and highly-valued system of wetlands that has been progressively drained over the past two centuries to create the city's metropolitan area. "I feel fiercely protective of these pockets of wildness in the midst of Perth's suburban sprawl", Nicholls states, "not just for their crucial role as ecological havens, but for their symbolic and spiritual position as places where the ancient past bubble to the transitory surface of the post-colonial city."