Journalist and writer Inaam Kachachi’s book (Lorna: Her Years with Jewad Selim) identifies two important facts for the history of Iraqi art through her follow-up of the past and future of Lorna Selim, the Anglo-Iraqi artist who was associated with one of the most important symbols of Iraqi plastic art, Jewad Selim, enjoying knowing these living facts and technical details about him, which we did not know previously with such accuracy (especially the problems he faced in achieving the Freedom Monument), and all of this gives the book distinct credibility and vitality.
The second fact is that the sources of this information are not drawn from books, as is the norm, but rather from the artist’s closest human being, his wife, who was influenced by him artistically and in life, even as she is now in the middle of her life contemplating the foggy fields of the Llanover area, south Wales after she was forced to return from Iraq in 1971. She carries within her; her memories of more than twenty years that she lived under the glow of the brilliant Baghdad sun. Until this moment, she is still drawing the houses, neighborhoods, and the shanasheel of old Baghdad, and she still uses the same colors (clay colors) that characterize the Iraqi atmosphere and prefers them to the colors of the English countryside, according to the author of the book, who made a great effort to search for the artist’s wife, who shares with her daughter and husband a house immersed in fog.
Its exquisite decoration and earthy colors give it a new dimension of embodiment. With knowing insight, the artist was as if she was painting against the times that imposed the renewal of the city. She was clinging to the past for fear of losing it. She was not hindered by the Baghdad boys who surrounded her, astonished to see the artist’s British wife sitting in the middle of the street to paint those minute details of Baghdad’s houses, without anyone stopping her.
Since times have changed in Baghdad and Jewad is no longer there, he has left it forever, in addition to the difficult economic conditions. The artist’s wife decided to return to Britain, carrying within her; her eastern dream mixed with the technique of her unique artist’s talent, as well as the dreams of the historical city. Which made her a different person and artist from her generation of female artists in England. That's why she still draws Baghdad in the old days and Iraqi faces, even though she lives in a country house in the middle of the Llanover Hills.
