Drawing the Waitākere Coast pairs Don Binney’s suite of 24 coloured pencil drawings of the Waitākere coast with an extended piece of writing by the artist, in which he describes the journey from Huia to Te Henga / Bethells Beach. This is a stretch of coastline the artist knew intimately. Binney grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau and first visited Te Henga as a boy.

Throughout his life, Binney spent periods living on the Waitākere coast, initially at Te Henga and later at Piha. From a young age, Binney hiked many variations of the route from Huia to Te Henga and frequently returned to favourite spots to sketch the landscape. He developed an in-depth knowledge of the local birdlife and was a founding member of the Waitākere Ranges Protection Society, putting up emphatic opposition to a proposed causeway and landfill in the early 1970s. Binney’s textual accounts range in subject from the gradient of the walking tracks to memories of those with whom he has shared this landscape, and the artworks it has inspired.

Author Don Binney
ISBN 978-186962-176-6
Hardcover
Pages 81
Dimensions 220 x 180mm
Publisher Random House New Zealand