For the month of October, Mr Hollingworth offered to hold his first exhibition in the region.

Razed In Australia will feature his large scale paintings of endangered Australian birds and animals at Tallwood Restaurant, Mollymook, as part of the Escape Artfest 2016 program.

Mr Hollingworth and artist wife Karen moved from Melbourne to Kings Point early in 2015.

“While holidaying in the area, we discovered a vibrant local community, and combined with the beautiful lakes, beaches and bushland, the region immediately felt like home to us,” he said.

“After discovering the wonderful Shoalhaven I began painting almost immediately, with a large acrylic on canvas of the endangered Hooded Plover,” Mr Hollingworth said.

“I had observed that bird on the rocks at Racecourse Beach.”

This new painting gave rise to whole new series based on vulnerable Australian native species of birds and animals, many of them nocturnal, such as bats, quolls, and night parrots (the latter considered extinct for many years).

He has painted a ghost bat and night parrot for the exhibition.

“My previous paintings were dark and colourful images of night skies, including galaxies, stars and constellations,” he said.

“So with many of these new night creature works I have included a scattering of stars across the surface.”

The natural world is a central theme in Robert’s art and writing.

His most recent novel, The Colour of the Night, tackles the divide between nature and culture as its main subject, asking whether young Australians living with technology and the internet are leaving the natural world behind and what that might mean for future societies.

“Although I lived for many years in Melbourne, working as a lecturer in Fine Art at RMIT University, I grew up in rural Victoria,” he said.

Robert has written four novels and held more than thirty exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and overseas.

He has won awards in both fields and his art is held in many public collections.