Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

Boy with Hay Bale, oil on canvas, 27"x37", Steven Rhude The search for community is a creative process of constructing what Castells calls 'resistance identities' which oppose the 'legitimized identities' constructed for us in the context of civil society and its state apparatuses.'     Michael Corbett - Learning to Leave, The Irony of Schooling in a Coastal Community, Fernwood Publishing  The guest analyst referred to the region as ' a resource based, industrial life style driven into the ground.' A world of clear cuts and   Monsanto. But the boy recalled his Dad saying otherwise. Something like a tangled and interwoven world of layers stood out in his memory. Starting from scratch - wind, seed, and all compressed into an image of iconic growth. That romantic folk legend said something about how he 'gave it up and went to town'. But that wasn't on his mind as a child. In fact learning to leave was furthest from his min...

Bee Keeper, oil on canvas, 62"x44", Steven Rhude Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will be in the next moment. Vicktor Frankl Domesticating honeybees has turned out to be a fragile and complicated part of contemporary post modern life. Without a doubt, the death of honeybees has accelerated in the last decade; just as the rural out migration of humanity has also accelerated to the urban jungle, leaving most people alienated from the importance of bees until the honey supply in the pantry runs low. Bee Keeper, (detail)  Honeybees have always had enemies, even before we domesticated them. But a list of current threats to their existence would include moths, mites, viruses, bacteria, the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Particularly disturbing is the pesticides we put on plants they pollinate and ironically, also the pesticides used to protect bees from other insects. By helping them we are also killing them...

Road to Yankee Harbour, oil on board, Steven Rhude, Argyle Fine Art Been  driv'in on roads going up. Been driv'in on roads going down. Been all the way to FPI, just to hear they done left town. Seen too many doors closed. Seen too many committees froze,  by the ghost of Hollis Brown. 'They're to blame" said the serf - "waste and empty is the sea", So the Master said - "move along folks; nothing left in here that's free." "We have no criminals here in town", said someone close to someone near. "Mister", the Master said -  "I might make the rules, but it's the Bible you should fear." '"The Bible?' said the serf, "It's got noth'in on me, the book I read, cried and bled, with the voice of Socrates." He'd been to the land they call Green, been jerked on up, and jerked on down, Seen em' sick with every lean. With their ears in the water and their face in...

Spruce Branch, graphite on paper, 15"x30", Steven Rhude  She said realism was the kind of art her parents liked .  It was a declaration steeped in an historic upheaval with white washed limitations. The avant-garde and the laws of the contemporary establishment rendered it in a minimalist text not generally meant for public consumption. Cherished and protected like the Book of Kells, it was manna for the priests of post.    However, it was nothing new to them, they were all seasoned realists, who heard it all before by previous provocateurs -  those   providers of a post modern elixir freely passed around the gallery camp fire to quell the fears of the illusion of the painted third dimension . Oh those realists, they knew that the other art was challenging, and intelligent. They also have a healthy respect for it. Even like it when it is in the groove and is interconnected and pluralistic. But every one knows it is time for a boundary revie...

Road to Lunenburg, oil on board, 20"x24", Steven Rhude, Argyle Fine Art For years it thrived on fish. Thrived on the proud identity that comes with a hefty price - that of sail, shipbuilding and that vessel pictured on a dime; a schooner everyone has seen or heard of.  A tough town with lots of beer and brawls - money, salt, and cod. An old town class with a working waterfront. A palace school like nothing the province had ever seen, or will see again. To educate was important, so they built it themselves - like they did everything. Built the town out of Hemlock. Folded up old newspapers like an Accordion and wedged them in the seams of the floorboards to block out the cold drafts.  And for migrant residents to find today.  Buffalo Times, the Shipping News... something was always threatening the fishing way of life said the oldest form of gossip known to man. Even had a Town Crier But rot comes from within. It's a long and sordid tale, not at ...