Lady June
| Lady June | |
|---|---|
.jpg) |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | June Campbell Cramer |
| Also known as | June 'Onion' |
| Born |
3 June 1931 Doncaster, Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 7 June 1999 (aged 68) Deià, Majorca, Spain |
| Genres | Progressive rock |
| Occupation(s) | Poet, painter, singer |
| Instruments | Singing |
| Years active | early 1960s – 1999 |
| Labels | Caroline |
| Associated acts | Kevin Ayers, Gong |
June Campbell Cramer (3 June 1931 – 7 June 1999), better known as Lady June, was an English painter, poet and musician. She was associated with the Canterbury scene and recorded two albums. She exhibited and performed her works in several countries, often combining her painting, poetry and music into multimedia presentations.
AllMusic described her as a "Bohemian artist", and an obituary in The Independent called her "a great British eccentric and cosmic prankster".
June Campbell Cramer was born on 3 June 1931 in Doncaster in Yorkshire, England. Her parents were Scottish and Russian, and she was brought up in Plymouth according to the strict rules of the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative Evangelical Christian movement. In the late 1940s, her father, a fashion retailer, took her to the Spanish island of Majorca, where he introduced her to modelling. June moved to London in the 1950s where she worked as a model and studied at an art college. In the early 1960s she returned to Majorca, where she continued modelling in Palma.
In Palma June met several musicians including Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers, who later became associated with the Canterbury scene and were founding members of the Canterbury bands Gong and Soft Machine. June later moved to the coastal village of Deià on Majorca, home of the English poet Robert Graves. Allen said that in order to live there "you had to have some sort of satisfactory relationship with him [...] Robert was very tolerant of June, and she hung out with him." June began painting in Deià and put on several exhibitions of her work there as June 'Onion', hanging an onion over each piece as her signature. Her paintings, and later her poetry, were filled with elements of "surreal humour".
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