Megan Ruby Lee

Local Contemporary Art Prize 2026 – Finalist

Image courtesy of the artist.

Megan Ruby Lee | Last light | 2025 | linocut, oil-based ink on Japanese Awagami Kitakata, 36 gsm | 102 x 142cm

Last Light is a large-scale lino print capturing a male and female pair of Red-tailed Black Cockatoos resting within flowering wallum heathland, an ecosystem now found only in fragments across coastal Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi Country. Lake Cootharaba and the hills of the Noosa hinterland sit quietly in the distance.

The composition captures a moment of tenderness and tension. The female’s spotted feathers dissolve into the night sky, as though she is vanishing before the male’s eyes. He appears protective, even adoring, yet his gaze extends beyond her, unaware of her quiet fading.

The work reflects on the slow disappearance of coastal species and habitats, and the uncomfortable truth that love without conscious awareness, attention, and care can still lead to loss. It considers how easily this decline can unfold in plain sight.

Through the physical process of carving and printing, a practice that requires patience, attention, care, and vision, I engage with ideas of fragility and permanence. The piece subtly explores the quality of our relationships with place and each other, asking: How do we truly love and care for what we say we value, whether nature or one another, before it vanishes before our eyes?