Alice Elahi’s retrospective, Landscape through an Artist’s Eyes, prompted her daughter Nushin Elahi to think seriously about publishing a book celebrating her mother to coincide with the exhibition.
“I thought it would be thrilling to mark the event with a book on Alice Elahi the painter which will include new perspectives on the artist,” she notes. She also wanted to feature articles now out of print by former Pretoria Art Museum director Dr Albert Werth and art critic Johan van Rooyen (from the Pretoria News) as well as photographs of her work throughout her career.
“It doesn’t sound too tough a ask,” is what Elahi jnr thought, but once she started the work, just the avalanche of pictures, which to include and which not, was a nightmare. Her mom had, after all, been painting for the longest time and was a prolific painter.
But she also knows most about her mom’s work and sometimes accompanied her on some of the more secluded trips. “One has to remember that painting nature has its own hazards, like the weather,” she notes. “That’s why some of Mom’s paintings have real watermarks on them. It rained while she was painting and we couldn’t get her to move.”
She also wrote an essay on her mother and being the daughter of a painter for this book. “I remember family trips as a little girl where my dad would have to stop the car because Mom suddenly saw the colours of the DeDoorns valley,” she recalls.
“I’m not someone who can paint from memory,” says Elahi snr. “I need the real thing. My paintings have always been a direct response to nature. It’s about holding a moment, a distillation of time.”
Elahi jnr knew she needed to document and capture her mom’s work – the scale of it for one.
“It is about documenting the sweep of my mother’s work, it’s about legacy, something we’ve never had the money to do,” says the writer who, when she wrote about her mom, wanted to get the story of all the painter’s many stories.
Now is that time.
• There will be a limited print run of each hand-bound copy (a 70-page full-colour book) and they can be bought from the Art Museum or e-mail [email protected] for details.