June Miles
Painting
June Miles RWA is a landscape and still life painter, whose work is defined by a soft but vividly colourful palette. Her exhibitions represent work carried out not only in Cornwall, but also in France, where she and her late husband, artist Paul Mount, maintained a second home.
A painter in oil and teacher, born in London. June Miles studied at Slade School of Fine Art under Randolph Schwabe from 1941 to 43. During World War II she worked in an Admiralty drawing office drawing maps from 1943-5. After the War she studied at West of England College of Art in Bristol from 1946-8. She taught at the Bristol Polytechnic faculty of art and design, 1966 to 76.
June was the wife of Paul Feiler, the Internationally renowned modernist painter from the St Ives School, from 1946 until her divorce from him in 1967. During this period she painted as June Feiler, changing to her maiden name of June Miles after that. The many paintings that June Miles painted of Kerris were painted in the 60’s when she was still married to Paul Feiler and they owned a property in the village of Kerris. She painted from the chapel, which was the family home.
She married the sculptor Paul Mount in 1978. Miles was a member of Royal West of England Academy, Penwith Society of Arts and Newlyn Society of Artists. She participated in many mixed shows, including the Royal Academy, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Royal Society of British Artists, John Whibley Gallery, Women’s International in Paris, where she gained bronze medal in 1968, and in Cornwall. She had a long series of solo shows, including Van Mildert College in Durham University, 1970; Royal West of England Academy 1977; Beaux Arts, Bath, 1993; Penwith Gallery, St Ives, 1985; and Coach House Gallery, Guernsey, 1988. RWA, Plymouth and Bristol City Art Galleries hold examples. She and her husband Paul line in St Just, Penzance, Cornwall.
The National Collection holds 23 examples of her work.
The starting point for me can be a plant, flowers or a fabric and I enjoy relating them to the surroundings that I have chosen. Sometimes I find the setting for the still lives is too restricting so I introduce mirrors or landscapes behind them in order to create an illusion of distance. Relationships of colours and forms are the building blocks of a painting. I use colour against colour much as a musician will place note against note, using the recessive and dominant colours to describe forms within space.The question of influences is a subtle business - among the painters who have most impressed me are Velasquez, Goya, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse and Bonnard: also the Fauve painters Derain and Vlamink. In the end one has to find one's own way of solving the problems one has set for oneself.