​June Nelson was born and raised in industrial South Wales and now lives in Lewes, East Sussex, where she raised her children.  She has recently moved from a home studio to Phoenix Artspace, Brighton. She  works across various mediums but concentrates on drawing and painting. After a degree in English from the University of Reading, she worked in academic and educational publishing, alongside which she took art classes: first at Glasgow School of Art, then at the 369 Gallery and studio complex in Edinburgh, with such artists  as Callum Innes, Rose Frain, and Moyna Flannigan. When she moved South  she formalised her art making with a degree in Fine Art (Painting) from the University of Brighton.  She has been shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize in 2018 and 2023,  had two paintings chosen by Jo Baring for INGDiscerning Eye Exhibition 2020, and has recently exhibited  her smoke drawings in the Hastings Open 2022.

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STATEMENT
Making art out of prosaic stuff, hoping for some poetry
I mainly paint and draw, but my work has encompassed sculpture, moving image, and installations.  I am fuelled by an interest in female agency and our sense of self, using history, mythology, and personal memories to stand witness to often hidden or silenced lives, particularly those of women. For a visual artist, the materiality of thought and feeling is key, so I let my chosen mediums lead, whether oil paint, graphite, or smoke. Process, time, and the relationship between object and subject link the recurring patterns and images in my work: doubling; elusive surfaces; ambiguity.  Hands, masked faces, mirrors, and threads are common. Isolated or overlooked individuals, both past and present, frequently appear. 
   In my recent drawing practice I have been using collage and smoke (technically known as 'fumage') to explore family memory. After being separated during Lockdown, I was with my father on his deathbed and felt the last breath leave his body. I have since lost my mother. Inspired by memories evoked trawling through family photographs, I used a burning beeswax taper to draw with 'amorphous carbon'  (more commonly known as 'soot'). This elusive, difficult medium captures for me the fragility and transience of life, and of family and collective memories fading back through time. 
   Recent paintings include bathers and balancers; divers and queens; often using imagery from Greek mythology. I continue to explore the same themes and motifs – seeing and silencing; suppression and repression. In a weird juxtaposition of the personal and the historical, paintings portray women wearing deep-sea diving helmets; taking Tudor portraits as a starting point; uncanny faces gaze out at or hide from the viewer. As a modern woman, looking back along the matriarchal line, not much has changed; to quote Queen Elizabeth I, “I see everything, and much is lacking”.

CV
​Born Newport, South Wales. Lives and works in Brighton and Lewes, UK.

EDUCATION
Fine Art (Painting), BA Hons, University of Brighton, 2001
Modern Art & Modernism, Open University, 1987-88
English, BA Hons, University of Reading, 1978
Arts & Learning Short Courses for Artist Educators, Centre for Community Engagement, University of Sussex 2010–11
Certificate to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector, University of Brighton, 2009

EXHIBITIONS
Regenerate, group show at VOLT Gallery, Eastbourne, 2024

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 (touring UK 2023/24)
Hastings Open 2022, Hastings Museum and Gallery, 2022–23
Gallery 207, Lewes, Joint exhibition with Nadine Feinson, 2022
NU Artists, Inaugural group exhibition South Street, Lewes, 2021
ING Discerning Eye (selected by Jo Baring) 2020
​Technique, Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne 2019
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2018, touring exhibition, 2018–19
Martyrs Gallery, Lewes, Summer Salon, 2018
East Sussex Open, Towner Contemporary Art Museum, Eastbourne, 2010
Liverpool Biennial Independents, ‘Near Distance’, Arena Gallery, Liverpool, 2006
‘Voyager’, with Brighton’s MAZE Studio Group, Abbéville, France, January 2004
‘Voyager II: Lost Highway’, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, June 2004
['Project181/Projet 181' 2004-2005. DVD of the Anglo-French Cultural exchange between Sussex & Picardie. Bilingual edition Ignition Network 2005].
Present’, group show of alternative printmaking, CBAT, Cardiff, 2004
‘Tools for Recognition’, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, 2003
‘Watch this Space’, post-residency show, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, 2003
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RESIDENCIES
Create Space Wales, Ceredigion, 2021
AA2A Scheme, Kingston University Fine Art Department, 2010–11
‘Watch this Space’ – inaugural residency at Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, 2003

AWARDS & GRANTS
AccessArt ACE-funded '40 Artist Educators', 2014
Arts Council SE funding for building ‘The Cabinet of Imagined Mirrors’, 2003
Arts Council SE funding to MAZE studio group for 'Voyager', a collaboration with artists from Picardy, France 2004