A new retrospective exhibition celebrating the life of Molly Parkin is set to open in April, at The Stash Gallery, Vout O Reenees London. Parkin was born in 1932 in Pontycymer in the Garw Valley, Glamorgan, Wales. She has had a long and illustrious career as an artist, designer and fashion editor. From 1949 -to 1954, she attended Goldsmiths and Brighton art schools, where she received a Rome Scholarship. Parkin exhibited widely from the late ’50s to the mid-’60s and early ’60s. Her work was collected by the Tate and Brighton Museum. In 1956, she married Michael Parkin who she divorced in 1963. She has two daughters, Sarah and Sophie.
If life is about luck, she has created her own wonderful and these paintings are an amazing celebration of this life
In 1964 she started making hats and bags for the trendsetting shop Biba. She later opened her own boutique which she sold to the photographer Terence Donovan in 1965. She was appearing that same year in Lionel Rogosin’s groundbreaking film Good Times Wonderful Times. She started as a painter who made fashion as editor on Nova Magazine, finishing in fashion as Fashion Ed of The Sunday Times in the early 70s. She is fashion famous for establishing Paco Rabanne, Manolo Blahnik, Michael Roberts and Mr Pearl, amongst many others. She was awarded Fashion Editor of the year in 1971. She had affairs with many of the celebrity males of the time, including Playwright John Mortimer, screenwriter Peter Shaffer, Architect Cedric Price, and designer Brownjohn. In addition, she wrote part of the musical Oh! Calcutta (with John Lennon and Samuel Beckett).
Molly gave up fashion to start writing novels, comic erotica, ten novels later and many chat shows; she divorced painter Patrick Hughes and staged her own one-person show for five years. Finally, at 55, she gave up alcohol and cigarettes, lifelong addictions, and was sober for 35 years. With Sobriety, her painting muse returned and she has painted continuously for the past 35 years.
In 2012 awarded the Queens Civil List Pension for a lifetime to the Culture +The Arts of Britain. There are not many places, people or things that Molly has not met, explored or visited in her adventure of life. She has exhibited courage over and beyond the average calling and has always gone one step further and beyond the norm expected of her time, place and sex.
If life is about luck, she has created her own wonderful and these paintings are an amazing celebration of the life she has chosen to lead, always pulling with her a rich cast of characters and colours.
Molly Parkin, A 90th birthday Retrospective April 21st -May 28th 2022 Paintings & Drawings 1957-2022 – The Stash Gallery @Vout-O-Reenees.com The Stash Gallery, Crypt, 30 Prescot St. London E1 8BB 07753702910 @TheStashGallery_London