TEN FAGS AND A BOX OF MATCHES

Paintings by Jonathan Parkin

These paintings are about the past, a vivid time in my memory towards the end of the 60s and onset of the 70s. A time at the ‘fag end’ of my dad’s prodigious smoking career, and the beginning of mine.

It was a time when everyone seemed to smoke; a time of nicotine stained taprooms, grotty ashtrays, tepid beer and lock-ins; a time of coupons and catalogues; a time before health warnings and wraparound tumour graphics.

They are a hymn to my father and that distant rose-tinted analogue past; a time long before Brexit, Trump, global warming, the internet and clever phones; a time before the world turned lax and sour.

A time of course that never really existed, or as L.P. Hartley famously wrote: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

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