Southerly Bondi 2016/17

This commissioned work is entitled ‘Southerly Bondi’ – a hyper realist painting, acrylic on canvas 100 x 217 cm. I was working on this project for over a year.

The client wanted “every building recognisable”! This work offers extreme detail, being a miniature on a massive scale. Painted from the vantage of the northerly headland of Ben Buckler, it provides an unusual view of Bondi Beach with a Southerly Buster sweeping in over this cityscape. It is impossible to see the detail in one image so I have also attached a series of relatively close-up images of the painting further below.

From initial plein air sketches from the client’s Ben Buckler waterfront apartment, I painted a 59.4 x 84.1 cm study – see above and below. I returned several more times to the apartment to collect reference photographs.

I found the painting a challenge involving detailed work, and I resigned myself to the slow process of precise geometric painting of the more than 100 buildings and many more trees. Thankfully I often enjoyed the works’ mediative aspects.

The other images below help to see the detail inherent in this work. Southerly Bondi is designed to draw the viewer in, with more and more detail the closer you approach the painting. The many people, cars, trees, shops and restaurants offer Bondi stories.

The client is thrilled with the work.