Skillfully built up in successive layers of paint, renowned architect and contemporary painter Susan Rothwell depicts the view over Edwards Beach with decisive unblended square brushstrokes placed upon a warm orange ground. The broad brushstrokes convey the artist’s confident gesture and favour chromatic effects above linear details.
The artist has, with a restrained colour palette, created an engaging depth of field, ranging from the radiating shadow of a palm tree in the foreground to tiny figures pacing along the waterfront at the foot of the island. Against graduated tones of sand, ochre and turquoise, the graphic steel tripod of the shark net’s pylon stands proudly in the foreground. Its strong metal beams, in striking black lines, draw attention by virtue of being the sole vertical elements in a composition almost entirely constructed from horizontal brushstrokes.
Erected in 1935, this net enclosure was suspended from steel cables that extended from anchor posts on Rocky Point Island (the promontory between Edwards and Balmoral beaches) and on the northern end of Edwards Beach, from where this painting was executed, at the water’s edge.