Molly Parkin, Welsh-born artist and former fashion editor, dies aged 93

Molly Parkin, the Welsh-born artist who worked in fashion and journalism and later returned to painting, has died at the age of 93 after suffering from Alzheimer’s. Art, the obituary notes, was her first and last love and the achievement she had most wanted from life. She was born in Pontycymer in the Garw valley, the younger daughter of Reuben Thomas and Ronnie (Rhonwen).

From infancy she was sexually abused by her father, an experience she revealed in her 2010 memoir, Welcome to Mollywood. As a teenager she began painting after a long convalescence from a bicycle accident and won a scholarship to Goldsmiths in 1949 and then to Brighton College of Art.

Parkin moved from selling paintings collected by the Tate and Brighton Museum into fashion and publishing, becoming fashion editor at Nova in the mid-1960s and later working for Harpers & Queen and the Sunday Times, where she won a press award in 1971. She published novels and other writing, married twice, and struggled publicly with alcoholism before joining Alcoholics Anonymous in 1987 and returning to painting.

Financial troubles led to bankruptcy in 1998 and a move in 2002 to a one-bedroom flat on the World’s End estate in Chelsea, which she made into a studio; her work sold again and she received a civil list pension in 2012. She is survived by her daughters Sophie and Sarah and three grandchildren.

Key Topics

Culture, Molly Parkin, Pontycymer, Goldsmiths College, Nova, Tate