The Artist
June draws the way other people keep silence.
The beginning
June trained as a printmaker, spent six years illustrating other people’s ideas, and one October evening ran out of white paper. The only surface left in the studio was a scrap of black mounting board and a stick of chalk. The drawing that happened that night — a window, lit from inside — changed the direction of everything that followed.
Ten years later, white chalk on black canvas remains the centre of the studio’s work, alongside graphite, pencil, charcoal and ink — the quiet mediums, the ones that forgive nothing and therefore mean everything.
The process
Every piece begins with looking — usually for far longer than the drawing itself takes. Chalk cannot be erased from canvas without leaving a ghost, so each mark is decided before it is made. The large works are drawn standing, at arm’s length, over weeks of slow layering.
The studio is a converted grain store with a single, enormous north-facing window. North light doesn’t change its mind during the day, which makes it the only honest collaborator a monochrome artist can have.
The work
The finished pieces live in collections across Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America — reading rooms, hallways, one lighthouse. Commissioned portraits, especially of animals, have become the studio’s most personal work: drawings made for people who understand that time is finite and love is not.
Every original leaves the studio framed, certified, and crated by hand. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is printed. Everything is drawn.