Boy with Yellow

Boy with Yellow, oil on canvas, 14"x 16", Steven Rhude

It never ceased to amaze him. That act of scrubbing oil paint around long enough on a canvas or panel, until finally  creating a mental dialogue with his subject. Who was this child? Who is he now? And who will he be?  Simultaneously sensing an expression evolve, like a ship advancing out of the fog, the painter grappled with shape analysis and proportions. The child's eyes changed with every blink - or when gazing down at the concrete floor, and then back up; staring strait at him. Highlights moved back and forth from the white of the eye to the pupil. Eventually, the afternoon light, obscures the brown eyes as they turn into black marbles, like pools of the deepest value imaginable. He wiggles and squirms to much for the painter, but even though the sitting is short, the experience is long.

Well then he ponders why he would want to... no, how could he transcribe the secrets the boy was already whispering in his left ear. Certainly no painting could achieve this. How could the layers contain such literal honesty through the brush of a painter whose mirror of innocence cracked long ago?

They take a break, and the boy draws - or as he says: 'make a scary dinosaur', with paper board and paints. Then another drawing of a house, with a man and his dog. Another of a man and a rainbow with the sun. Heroes and bad guys; soon the floor is littered with calligraphic images of the boy's thoughts. Every drawing contains a verbal addendum, explaining the drama and characters involved in the drawings to the painter.

Scary Dinosaur by Sam

Dinosaur on the Move by Sam 

Later, the boy is watching Tree house. The painter returns to the studio and veils the painting with traces and layers of modernist drips, spattering and a convoluted webbing of linear colours. He has been doing this to his paintings for years. Securing his initial impression of the subject beneath an unpremeditated abstraction of the primary colours. He moves around the painting 360 degrees. The familiar introduction of  The Octonauts resonates down from the TV room below to the basement studio. He then restores the painting to the easel.

Detail, Boy with Yellow

Later the boy sees the painting in progress. Curious why his image lies beneath such a colourful chaos, yet more pleased to know something tangible is being created. From him, with him, and about him. In the following days, the painter goes into the studio to work on it some more. The boy won't sit for long; he wants to make drawings and paintings himself to give to his friends.

    
Steven Rhude, Wolfville, Nova Scotia