Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

    https://artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/blog/terroir-qa-series-steven-rhude and if you're interested in a catalogue: https://shop.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/collections/frontpage/products/terroir-a-nova-scotia-survey-exhibition-catalogue Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

Tiananmen Square "6/4", oil on panel, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2012/06/tiananmen-square-then-and-now/100311/ Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS www.stevenrhudefineart.com

Red Fan, Forbidden City, oil on panel, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude As a painter, the intensity of crowds, and the ubiquity of digital photographers struck me at times as an advantage in the Forbidden City. Everyone photographing each other in some respects, however for what reason - one only knows. There is a binary quality between humanity being ignored and blending in, and those being observed yet unaware of the observer, who is indeed also being observed. It is a place of intense motion, and also stasis - a place where one can feel elation in the presence of an ancient culture, and trepidation at the chaotic prospect of how fragile it all is. There is at once peace and solitude, and if one looks down  and forfeits control, the stones reveal tragedy.  Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS www.stevenrhudefineart.com

The Artist's Studio, Wolfville, NS,  Joseph Hartman, Photograph Copyright Joseph Hartman A little over a year ago, a photographer named Joseph Hartman http://josephhartman.ca/index.html called me and asked to photograph my studio as part of a book project he was working on documenting the studios of artists across our fair land. The objective was to make a record of how an artist's space really is, and not something doctored up for the likes of a home design publication for instance, with the artist in their Sunday best poised in front of a painting executing a final detail.  In accordance with consistency, the artist must be missing in action as were all the other artists chronicled up to the point of Joseph's visit to my studio crypt, and as all the other artists would be until the exercise is completed. I'm not normally one that likes people in my creative digs (cat and family excluded), but after viewing an exhibit he did on the artist's studio,  http:/...

Pink House, Some where on the Avalon Peninsula, o/b, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude It's been said that painting is a lie... that there is no defining moment that captures an essential truth about a situation or place. However, I do love to make paintings, so one could conclude I also love to lie. Yet, to lie is the image craft at the disposal of the painter - the cultural boarder one crosses over if one is intrigued about another place or culture that isn't their own, or where they grew up. But we know it is dangerous to lie, we are taught today that if it isn't experiential, one has no business treading into another ones cultural ground of being. But this experiential thread is being tested today as never before. So what is it to be a Newfoundlander?, a Nova Scotian?, an Indigenous person? - or Euro centric? And what can a seemingly isolated house tell us about the identity of the owner? Many of us weren't taught to lie while attending the sweat lodge of t...

Orphan in a Beijing Restaurant, oil on panel, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude http://www.stevenrhudefineart.com/

Man in a Boat, oil on board, 24" x 30", Steven Rhude “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” ― Kenneth Grahame , The Wind in the Willows   http://www.stevenrhudefineart.com/   Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS