Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

The Racetrack, oil, 1890s, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Cleveland Museum of Art May 14th, 1888 As a reporter, one of his skills was to eavesdrop. Alone and listening in on the conversation between the scruffy recluse and the waiter, eating his meal quietly while feigning to read the paper, no one would suspect anything. If they glanced over they would probably take him for a travelling salesman, not a reporter baiting the hook. The long bearded guy had to be the artist who often dined alone, an eccentric according to art dealers and the few patrons, that helped prep him ... for what? An article about a slob who already, in his estimation, was an incurable romantic, a reputed mystic; one whose paintings looked like they were created using as much tobacco juice as he did oil paint.  He really didn't know. All he knew was that he seemed to be going backwards into a romantic pool of... of... What kind of headline could he use? literature Inspires Painting  How boring could...

Our Canadian pioneer of modernism, David Milne, had the idea, and actually did a painting of one of his favorite places with his painting gear in the fore ground. It is a theme that has been continued and appreciated especially for those artists where 'place' resonates with both aesthetic and social meaning. Buoys on the Edge of Burnt Point, oil on canvas, 38"x 50", Steven Rhude Although this painting excludes my painting gear, and introduces the buoys instead (a figurative object I have come to strongly identify with), it is none the less a painting place I hope to return to more than once or twice in the future. It is a great spot to go and be suspended in time, and find union with the ocean, tides, horizon and of course - the sky. Steven Rhude Wolfville, NS

For an uncertain period of time, we humans walk through life in a suit of skin .  However, our existance is also comprised of an inner life as well. Much time and thought has been spent determining just what that is. The form of expression called  Realism  allows for me an elastic means to explore this equation. Whatever this inner life is to us, the ability to transcribe it outwardly through representational painting, has preoccupied western man within a spiritual, psychological, social, political, and aesthetic framework. The mature principles of Realism have endured and expanded over the last five hundred years because the artists practicing them have been able to find the necessary metaphors through which the world - externally, could be made comprehensible; resulting in a personal vision of a constantly changing global culture and society, of which we are all influenced greatly. In my opinion, post modernism, through numerous mutations, has lost the ...