The Approach is pleased to present new large drawings by Jacques Nimki. Each intricately detailed drawing contains hundreds of life size depictions of weeds that are drawn or painted from direct observation and copied from the botanical world of gardening illustration, plant guides, how to draw plant books and observation.

Nimki works from the landscape, using plants as the main inspiration. In the past three years he has concentrated on drawing weeds and discarded flowers that he finds in the urban environment, discovering beauty in the overlooked and unconsidered. Nimki describes his works as ‘Florilegiums’ a word which literally means ‘flower book’, a category of books from the seventeenth century where images are more significant than text. Drawing on a culture of collecting based on curiosity and beauty rather than scientific investigation, Nimki begins by researching and walking to an area to collect information. He records a variety of information about each weed that is both factual and fictional, combining the traditional techniques of flower pressing and seed collecting with drawings made on location using a basic palmtop programme.

From his studies Nimki makes drawings which cover large surfaces with complex networks of intertwined flowering weeds. His delicate use of H pencils create very fine and barely visible lines, which are elegantly built up in layers across the surface of the page. There are some areas of concentrated density whilst others are left open. For the coloured drawings he makes pastels by mixing white pigment and chalk to        produce a mark that has a subtle, ghost like presence. The drawings have an obsessive quality of the fanatical hobbyist, combining the precision of Victorian illustration with the wilder character of the rambling weed. Nimki creates elaborate networks of intense detail, which like the plants they are inspired by, grow into complex patterns of regeneration.