Cane fire, dusk #2 by Lynne Wallis 

Finalist, 2026 Stanthorpe Regional Gallery Art Prize.

Across Northern Rivers cane country, stubble is still sometimes burnt at the end of the day. As dusk fades, a line of flame moves across the field, crackling and alive, fierce and beautiful, then gone as the dark closes in. This painting holds that brief, intense moment.

Lynne Wallis is a landscape painter based in Ballina Shire, on the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Her paintings begin with time spent in the landscape and are shaped by what memory holds onto. The region she lives in is often there, but her work reaches past any one place toward something more lasting: the light, weather and stillness of the natural world, and the fleeting moments that make it precious.