Posts

Showing posts from April, 2015

Abbozzo Gallery in May

Image
 Very excited about Abbozzo Gallery. I will have four works featured during May in Toronto. It's a wonderful space to view art! Caplin Cove Modern, o/p, 24" x 24", Abbozzo Gallery Caplin Cove Modern #2, o/p, 24" x 24", Abbozzo Gallery About the Gallery: We provide exceptional art that thrills, inspires and builds relationships. In so doing we seek to ensure the success of our collectors, our artists and the gallery. Abbozzo Gallery was established in 1993 to represent regional, Canadian and International artists. The gallery exhibits original paintings, prints, works on paper and sculpture in a warm and inviting setting in the heart of Toronto. Abbozzo Gallery takes pride in our high standards. We provide a complete range of services to our collectors including home consultation, assistance with framing design, delivery, installation and appraisal. Ordering online? Click here for our shipping guarantee. Director &

Five Women, Beijing

Image
Five Women, Beijing, 13" x 70", oil on canvas, Steven Rhude “The way we understand both our present and our future depends on what we have lived through.” ― Xinran , Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love “The reason some portraits don't look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures.” ― Salvador Dalí Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

Recent Aquisition

Image
Very pleased these two paintings have found a home with a wonderful collector. Miner's Ascent, Inverness, o/p, 24" x 24", private collection Above the Mine, Inverness, o/p, 24" x 24", private collection Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

Recent work off to Newfoundland

Image
Post  Cod, o/p, 24" x 24", Emma Butler Gallery Here's a recent painting off to Emma Butler Gallery in St John's NL in May. Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

Recent Work off to Toronto

Image
House of Ore, Bell Island, o/p, 24" x 24", Abbozzo Gallery Caplin Cove Modern, o/p, 24" x 24", Abbozzo Gallery Ore Car, Bell Island, o/p, 24" x 24", Abbozzo Gallery Caplin Cove Modern #2, o/p, 24" x 24", Abbozzo Gallery Looking forward to having these four paintings featured at Abbozzo Gallery, Toronto in May. Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

Obsolescence

Image
Woman with Buoy, Caplin Cove, NL, o/p, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order. Obsolescence frequently occurs because a replacement has become available that has, in sum, more advantages than the inconvenience related to repurchasing (or making) the replacement. Obsolete refers to something that is already disused or discarded, or antiquated. Typically, obsolescence is preceded by a gradual decline in popularity. - Wikipedia Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

Modernism's Last Stand - part 2

Image
Last Stand, Caplin Cove, #2, o/p, Steven Rhude This is a second version of the same fishing shed depicted previously from above Caplin Cove. As a subject for painting, it continues to convey something of a mystery for me. It is a rectangular structure containing the stretcher bar traits of the painter's canvas, it's conduciveness to apply abstract notations from modernist painters like Mondrian are apparent as the facade reveals a grid like pattern. And like abstraction - it is at once an impediment, and yet, also attainable in passage, a symbol for reinforcing flatness, and a vehicle for the illusion of depth. Upon first encountering the shed, I at once desired to distinguish a balance between the outside and inside world it has by design, over laid for me. As a structure it both prevents and allows me passage. With that in mind a wide range of meaning forms the intent. On the one hand it is utilitarian, on the other, a proto- modernist object. A place of revelation, a

Modernism's Last Stand

Image
Last Stand, Caplin Cove, oil on board, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude As Serge Guilbaut has argued, during and after WWII, abstraction became a signifier for the ‘Free World.’ The triumph of the individual and the universal was read into abstraction, especially that of Jackson Pollock and other members of the New York School, and used as a Cold War tool to combat not only to lurking memory of Hitler’s Fascism, but also the ‘red fear’ represented by the Soviet Union. Both Hitler and the USRR, had, after all, denounced abstract art and encouraged social realism as the only acceptable art. Many European artists chose to rally behind ‘the universal’ as an oppositional to ‘the national’ because nationalism was understood to have been responsible for German fascism. For American artists, ‘the univer-sal’ held out the hope that the United States could begin to put forward its own ‘High Culture’; as Guilbaut has observed, ‘America was now on the point of making the transiti