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 a more formal training in Fine Art (Painting) at the University of Brighton.
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, and been lonlisted for the Jackson’s Art Prize. She is an alumna of the Turps Offsite mentoring programme for painters.
STATEMENT
My work centres on the hidden stories that shape our lives, particularly those of women. Drawing on observation, memory, and personal and historical archives, my practice has included drawing, installation, moving image, and experiments with materials such as smoke, beeswax, and plaster. That interest in process and materials continues in my painting, where surface, colour, and layered marks carry emotional weight. Recent paintings focused on female figures in diving helmets, ruffs and boxing gloves, inspired by Elizabethan and Flemish portraiture. In the latest series, Ladders and Libations , those concerns have become less obvious. Ladders might suggest aspiration, transition or escape, while vessels and libations evoke ritual, offering and transformation. I’m interested in creating images that feel psychologically charged without settling into a fixed narrative. All the paintings could be said to centre on states of becoming and the tension between what is contained and what is seeking release.
My work might combine historical and mythological references with a contemporary psychological charge, but ultimately it’s about what paint and colour can do: how a presence emerges from the material itself. I am interested in creating images that suggest stories rather than tell them outright,;where history meets myth, humour sits alongside seriousness, and personal experience touches something more universal.
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
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026
Works on Paper, Turps group exhibition, Hastings Contemporary. June
Turps|East Sussex 2026 Show, BN9 Marine Workshops, Newhaven, July
Hive, Blue Monkey Network group show, Gallery North, Hailsham, July
2025
‘Small Works’, group show, Newhaven Art Projects, November
‘After-image’. group show, Phoenix Artspace , 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, at Devonshire Collective, 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