Salah Elmur was born in a village off the western bank of the Blue Nile in 1966. He grew up on crochet designs knitted by his mother - imaginary animals, men and women in love, circles and triangles in an endless integration of colors – in which he saw words and characters. His mother’s designs opened Elmur’s mind to the world around him and led him to scribble words before he could speak to them.
Salah Elmur’s work is composed from a fertile visual vocabulary that draws on his observations of life, returning to childhood and youth for the scenes, situations, and impressions that he depicts in his work. Heavy symbolism, a tendency towards vivid color combinations, and distortion of natural figures and proportions are some of the markers of Elmur’s paintings. His works take the observer to a different reality in which relationships change with the sense of nostalgia. This surrealistic swirl of memory results in tender, intimate vignettes of human relations.
