Description

June Black (1910–2009) was a multi-faceted artist,
painter, ceramicist, and writer, who exhibited in
the 1950s and 1960s, battling for visibility in a
male-dominated art world. Her work reflected her
extensive reading and interest in existentialism,
surrealism and the theatre of the absurd. Sheridan
Keith’s biography of her mother quotes generously
from the journals June kept over forty years to keep
track of her extensive reading, her art practice and
her life, and from June’s absurdist play The Purple
Umbrella. The result is a biography that sizzles with
erudition and humour and gives a rare insight into a
fascinating woman ahead of her time.