“There is so much fullness in my life…Life and living intrigues me.  There is much that I still need to know of and about.  Much that I still need to do.  You will say that I am happy and fulfilled!  Indeed I am!  Why is there still loneliness?  I do not know.  I am surrounded by people and things about which I care.  I have material security.  But my heart aches for the world: its sadness; the terrible problems that face humanity; the haunting questionable future of all creatures; the many things that do not bear thought – so I simply get on with what I can think of, and do, and in which to take pleasure – and there is much loveliness, goodness and truth.  Life is vibrant.  Love is the best.  It is true goodness.”
- June Stannard, ‘My Banyan Tree’, 1998

World War Two ended in May 1945.  June was discharged two months later, and returned home to her family in Zululand.  At home, she unpacked her paints, brushes and canvases, set up her easel and painted, in oils, a sombre black man standing in resigned despair in the moonlight.  She says that he is her talisman and goes wherever she goes.

In 1954, after some encouragement from a friend, June once again unpacked her easel, canvasses and oil paints.  She submitted some of her work and was accepted as a member of the Natal Society of Artists.  She chose to paint under her maiden name, and entered six pictures in the July 1955 NSA Golden Jubilee Exhibition in Durban.  One of these works, a painting she has called ‘Consider the Lilies’.