He states that during his early life he was surrounded by crime and social problems, but that the influence of literature, art, science and spiritual philosophies helped him to look beyond the limitations of this environment.
[5] Nicholls had his first solo show at a gallery run by James Fuentes in New York City in July 1999 and in 2004 developed many of his psychological ideas into an interactive virtual reality installation called The Living Image.
The project was the subject of an academic study into the impact of virtual reality and installation art, the details of which were later published in two books dealing with scenography and performance.
In the article he makes it clear that he believes mainstream science will eventually fully embrace psi, or psychical perceptions as natural, rather than supernatural or paranormal.
As part of his inquiry into psi and human consciousness, in 2009 he began working on a series of telepathy experiments in a joint project with controversial scientist Rupert Sheldrake.
In the October 2012 issue of The Psychologist, the journal of the British Psychological Society, a review of Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience by Graham Nicholls, criticised him for failing "to take into account psychometric properties (e.g. reliability and validity)" in the questionnaire section of the book.