FOR Joe Lang, sifting through his late parents’ artwork and pulling it into a comprehensive exhibition was an immensely personal task and tribute.

The collection traces his father, Chris Lang’s development as an artist, from his work at college to the last canvas he feebly worked on before he died last September, aged 65, of stomach cancer.

Also incorporating work by his mother Gwen, who died in 1994 after a battle with breast cancer, it reflected their relationship, as well as Joe’s with his parents.

When tragedy struck in the form of a fire at the Tap gallery last weekend, destroying two precious works and damaging others, it was a heartbreaking moment for 25-year-old Joe.

Despite the damage, the exhibition is going ahead, with work moved into Tap’s undamaged Winch Room, where it will be shown by appointment.

“It was a really personal show,” says Joe, who selected the work along with close friend, artist and curator Jon Kipps.

“The stuff that’s on the floor is the stuff I wanted to show the most – it wasn’t on the floor, it was in the main gallery. They were cherry picked I guess by myself and Jon – my dad saw Jonathan as a second son.

“It was personal for me and him, and for everyone that knew my mum and dad.”

Chris, a headteacher at Grange Primary School in Wickford, was a source of ideas and imagination for Joe and Jon.

“He was our inspiration when we were kids,” he says. “Whether it was getting us a few breeze blocks and some tiles in the garden or lots of spray paint and some really big canvases to do some graffiti art.”

Originally the show was supposed to just showcase Chris’ work, but Joe explains it seemed natural to incorporate some of Gwen’s as well.

“She didn’t end up having as many paintings in the house as my dad – he was just so prolific,” he says. “But her work was always around.

“There’s a self-portrait done a couple of years before she died, she was ill and you can see her face is all puffy from the drugs.

“The majority of the show is my dad’s stuff, but I slipped some of my mum’s work in – I don’t know how, it just happened.”

Sadly, Gwen’s work was the most damaged in the fire, with smoke clouding and fading colours.

Describing the moment he found out about the fire, Joe says: “Jon called me and was like ‘I’ve heard there’s been a fire, I don’t think it’s too bad, I’m going to go and have a look.’ “It is heartbreaking, but mainly because the ones that got damaged were my mum’s and I’ve got less of her work.”

He admits that his dad was not over-protective about his work, storing it in the garage, and Joe is probably more sensitive about it than Chris would have been.

One of the pieces the fire left untouched was the last canvas Chris worked on. Plain and white with just a few wispy outlines, it’s a poignant contrast to the colourfully layered work which adorns the rest of the room.

“I had been travelling and when I got back, he was really ill and he wasn’t painting, which was even more scary than the fact that he was ill,” says Joe.

“I think I bought the canvas to encourage him to do something new and that’s all he managed. I guess in the sense the paintings have quite a narrative, we’ve put that there for a reason, showing the end in contrast to the others.

“You can see work from before my mum died, after my mum died, when he was at college. You can see how the work has evolved, the technique and colour has changed over time – and it’s a huge body of work.

“I don’t know anybody who has this amount of work, especially someone who doesn’t have a studio, his studio was his house.