Artist's views: familiar vantage points revisited

Nick Hollo draws almost every day, usually somewhere along the coast between Bondi and Coogee, on the harbour from a ferry or at a beach.

He works at the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust and his oil pastel pictures are used in many of their publications. Nick is also an architect and designer and has written and illustrated a book, Warm House Cool House, about sensible and attractive house design to suit Australia's climates.

In a new exhibition in the Members Lounge, Nick Hollo has produced a stunning collection of oil pastels of Sydney's harbour foreshores and coastline. Inspired by the views once painted by early colonial artists such as Martens, von Guerard, Lycett and Peacock, and more recently Streeton, Roberts, Preston and Wakelin, Nick has set out to revisit the locations to try and capture those same vistas as seen today. In some cases, such as at Coogee Bay or the views towards North Head from Vaucluse, the scene depicted in the early painting is readily recognisable today. In others, the location and the outlook have changed dramatically. But in all these places the underlying landform and the characteristic succession of views around headlands to the foreshore beyond make these views unmistakably Sydney.