Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

Everett's Underwear, rug hooking, Laura Kenney Marshalltown 101, Poor House Miser, oil on masonite, Steven Rhude "The development of folk art for a museum audience in the late twentieth-century Nova Scotia coincided with changes in art education and the sales market more generally. Much like conceptualism, contemporary folk art in Nova Scotia became a site for new, academically trained arrivals to explore an artistic counter culture set quite apart from the elite collecting circles across North America that had so marked the early twentieth century and the foundation of most metropolitan art museums, include the NSMFA. The late 1960s and early 1970s had seen an influx of new MFA - degree programs across the United States - fifty three programs in studio art were inaugurated between 1965 and 1974. "  - Erin Morton, For Folk's Sake  Many trained MFA holders at NSCAD were convinced to rally around alternatively distinctive forms of art - thus folk art ...

Home is Where your House Is, rug hooking, Laura Kenney Marshalltown Road, Fixing it up for Maud, oil on canvas, Steven Rhude "The AGNS has Maud's house..and when I visit the gallery it feels like Maud is present..as opposed to Marshalltown with the MacKay - Lyons memorial...Maud doesn't live there any more. "Home is where you hang your hat"...I heard that a lot being a military brat..but really it is home is where your house is...and Maud lives in Halifax." - Laura Kenney "When MacKay - Lyons erected his replica of the of the Lewis home in 1996, Riordon heralded it as "a modern, symbolic steel house" and noted it was the result of "a community effort that reaches beyond the borders of Digby County to embrace the whole province." The AGNS's promotional materials for the event invited interested parties to "visit the original Maud Lewis house, now carefully restored and protected, and to see many of Maud Lewis'...

Flowers for Maud, rug hooking, Laura Kenney Maud, Everett and that space in between, oil on canvas, Steven Rhude Artist notebook: Maud & Everett - I can perceive only this for now: that they represent the Woman of the East with the Man of the East. Anti-modernists without knowledge of the term. Vulnerable to the tangled skein of a life choice distortion by those with a penchant for institutionalizing them and Maud's image. Unknown to Maud and Everett, were the terms of an artistic movement that became Nova Scotia's new identity; a simple folk way of life that would become the antidote for a sputtering cultural economy perched in tourism's shop window for all to partake. However, for Maud, the reality was one of making pictures; her only true way out - serial painting, like pop radio plays the top ten hits over and over. Maud made the paintings and Everett pocketed the cash. Modernism passed by their door and a white space between them developed as Maud...

“ Das Bedürfnis, Leiden beredt werden zu lassen, ist Bedingung aller Wahrheit. (The need to lend a voice to suffering [literally: "to let suffering be eloquent"] is the condition of all truth)” ― Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics "The Alternative, the Poor Farm in Marshalltown, out in the country, was run as follows: If an unwed mother, circa 1930, gave birth, she and the child were removed by bailiff to the county of the mother's birth, turned over to the settlement sheriff and locked up with the poor and insane of the settlement county farm. What happened next depended entirely on the worth of the Matron, often the spouse of the keeper, Standards varied." - Lance Woolaver [1] "Historically, online there is a picture and small blurb about the Poor Farm or Poor House as it was locally known. It is now the site of the Maude Lewis heritage park. "The County Incorporation Act of 1879 stated that each county was now responsible for buildin...

Roxanne rowing off Canso during WW2, oil on canvas, Steven Rhude https://issuu.com/abbozzogallery/docs/celebrating_canada__10_

"Who would true valour see, let him come hither; One here will constant be, come wind, come weather. There's no discouragement,  shall make him once relent,  His first avowed intent  To be a pilgrim." - John Bunyan's Original Version, To be a Pilgrim The Day Maud Died, rug hooking, Laura Kenney The Day Maud Died, oil on masonite, Steven Rhude What constitutes the spirit of a house? This question may indeed point to the reason so many made their way to Maud's house, to meet Maud, and leave with a painting commemorating their journey and experience. A desire to apprehend and understand a particular spirit that was on her own pilgrimage - the sacred site being her own memories of Nova Scotia made manifest through panel boards, paint, and a corner studio with a window. Her grid to a point of departure. Her way out of the restrictions imposed upon her by the conventions of her body and rural society. However, as much as the tiny house became a barr...