JUNE WAYNE・Art & Science
The Celestial Works
Celestial Bodies

 
 
June Wayne’s Cognitos series served both as cosmic explorations and biographical portraits. “Outer space, like the new physics provides a physical path to a new reality. The exploration that Wayne undertook yielded metaphors that by their nature suggested transposition to inner space and the integration of the two in broader paradigms as necessary for survival in the twenty-first century.
— Arlene Raven, curator “June Wayne, A Retrospective”, Neuberger Museum of Art, 1997, exhibition catalogue essay.
 
Image of June Wayne Khis

Khis

Image of June Wayne Dor

Dor

Image of June Wayne Djuna

Djuna

Image of June Wayne Ari

Ari

Image of June Wayne Hel

Hel

Sunshine and firelight are temperature, or a level of saturation of color—leafed in precious metals or applied twenty times or more in thin washes of paint. Zuhle, Flor, and Anki (all 1984) are aspects of the same post-Impressionist universe of lights, but breaking closer or farther away, at midday or twilight, across mountains or deserts; as constellations, ocean mirrors, or galactic geyser sprays. Wayne’s super-chromatic hues have an absolute potential to be the very hottest and coolest at their most intensive degrees of illumination.
— Arlene Raven, June Wayne The Djuna Set.
Image of June Wayne Zhule

Zhule

Image of June Wayne Makh

Makh

Image of June Wayne Red

Rhed

Image of June Wayne Flor

Flor

To me, black is the most noble color. Black allows anything to happen, and imaginatively. It doesn’t partake of those earthly clichés about what color means: red is blood, blue is sky, green is earth. Such assumptions skew how we look at art. Let’s say it stands for night. The night focuses my atten­tion. There are fewer visual intrusions. Imagination really travels at night, and I feel free-freer than in the daytime. Black has the total tonal range. By comparison, other colors are very limited in expressive range. You have to do all kinds of things to make them “work.” However, when I work with color, I rarely use black, as well.
— June Wayne in conversation with Robert Barrett, Director of the Fresno Art Museum, 1988.