BIOGRAPHY
June Nelson is a contemporary artist living in Lewes, East Sussex, whose work focuses on drawing and painting, often shaped by personal narrative, social observation., and history. She is particularly interested in female agency and bearing witness to silenced lives. Raised in industrial South Wales, she brings a grounded, reflective sensibility to her practice.
After studying English at the University of Reading, Nelson had a career in academic and educational publishing. Alongside this, she developed her artistic voice, through classes at Glasgow School of Art and later the 369 Gallery and studio complex in Edinburgh. A move to the South of England , with a young family, led to her formal training in Fine Art (Painting) at the University of Brighton. She is currently part of the Turps Offsite Programme, an intensive artist-led mentoring programme that supports critical engagement and development within a peer-led context.
Nelson is a studio member at Phoenix Artspace in Brighton and also works at Towner Eastbourne, engaging with the wider arts community. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her installation Cabinet of Imagined Mirrors was shown at the Liverpool Biennial Independents 2006. She has twice been shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, with her smoke drawings. In 2025, she presented a solo show at Phoenix Artspace, Brighton (Diving Queens: Portraits of Resilience), and has recently had two works from the series selected for the exhibition 100/50 (Who’s counting?) at Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London.
STATEMENT
My work is underpinned by the unseen narratives that shape women’s lives — the quiet resilience, the private tensions, and the moments of transformation that often go unrecorded. I draw on observation, memory, and personal and historical archives to create paintings that explore the shifting space between vulnerability and power. I aspire to images that feel both familiar and uncanny: intimate scenes distilled into symbolic gestures, ambiguous settings, and figures who seem caught between inner and outer worlds.
A strong sense of materiality underpins my practice. Having worked across drawing, installation, moving image, and experimental materials such as smoke, beeswax, and plaster, I bring that same tactile curiosity into painting. Surface, colour, and process carry emotional weight; strength and fragility coexist in the marks, layers, and physical presence of the work.
My recent paintings introduce motifs of balance, ascent, and emergence — ladders, staged figures, and objects that hint at transition or self-interrogation. These sit alongside references to Elizabethan and Flemish portraiture and the strange protection of deep-sea diving gear. Symbols of restriction and containment meet gestures of defiance, humour, and self-exploration. Traditional royal portraiture merges with the solitary diver, embodying the multifaceted roles of artist, woman, and explorer navigating psychological depth.
Across the work, I aim to create images that are narrative without being illustrative, emotionally charged without sentimentality. I’m drawn to the threshold where history becomes myth, where personal experience becomes archetype, and where a touch of surreal humour can open a deeper truth. Ultimately, my practice is a way of making sense of the hidden stories we carry and inviting viewers to recognise something of their own.
CV
Born 1957, Newport, South Wales. Lives and works in Brighton and Lewes, UK
EDUCATION
TURPS Offsite Programme, 2024/26
Fine Art (Painting), BA Hons, University of Brighton, 2001
Modern Art & Modernism, Open University 1988
English, BA Hons, University of Reading, 1978
EXHIBITIONS
2025
‘Small Works’, group show, Newhaven Art Projects, November
‘After-image’. group show, Phoenix Artspace Window Gallery, November
‘Battleaxe’. Unit 2, St Leonard’s-0n-Sea, October
’Printworks’. Blue Monkey Network Group Show, Emma Mason Gallery, Eastbourne, September
’100/50 (Who’s Counting?)’. Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London, 20 June–19th July
‘Diving Queens: Portraits of Resilience (solo show), Phoenix Artspace, Brighton, April
Turps Hastings 2025 Exhibition, Rye Creative Centre, Rye, July
2024
Paperworks (group show), Newhaven Project Space,
Newhaven Open, BN1 Marine Workshops,Newhaven
Regenerate, Blue Monkey Network group show, Volt, Eastbourne
2023
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, UK tour 2023–24
Gallery 207, Lewes, two-person show with Nadine Feinson
2022
Hastings Open, Hastings Museum and Galler,y East Sussex
2021
NU Artists, group exhibition, South St, Lewes
2020
ING Discerning Eye , London (selected by Jo Baring)
2019
‘Technique’, Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne
2018
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize , UK tour 2018–19
Martyrs Gallery, Summer Salon, Lewes,
2010
East Sussex Open, Towner, Eastbourne
2006
Liverpool Biennial Independents, ‘Near Distance’ – Maze Studio show, Arena Gallery, Liverpool
2004
‘Voyager’, with Brighton’s Maze Studio Group, Abbéville, France, Anglo-French Cultural exchange Sussex & Picardie
‘Voyager II: Lost Highway’, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, Anglo-French Cultural exchange Sussex & Picardie
‘Present’, group show of alternative printmaking, CBAT, Cardiff
2003
‘Tools for Recognition’ (4 person show) Phoenix Gallery, Brighton
‘Watch this Space’, post-residency show, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton
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 ‘ Cabinet of Imagined Mirrors, Watch this Space Residency, Phoenix, Brighton, 2003
Arts Council SE funding to MAZE studio group for 'Voyager', a collaboration with artists from Picardy, France, 2004