Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

  He used to think about her during a hurricane. Going to a hardware store with no name and purchasing supplies and preparing to ensure the storm doesn't take them up in it's wake. Strange though, the thrill of her just continuing to paint as the ocean rose, breaching the beach and flooding their property and their only car - a Doge Colt of all things... not caring for the aftermath. Too much Turner perhaps; too many turbulent paintings in the carousel of western man. But she was right.       Now Fiona is destined (he likes her name).  Yet he wonders: "why do hurricanes consolidate circumstances?" He checks for batteries and flashlights.   Steven Rhude, Wolfville

  Boat Shed, Can't See Cove,   www.secordgallery.com oil on canvas, 36" x 52", Steven Rhude “He wasn’t a religious man but a vision of what Paradise might be came to him, a windowed room afloat on an endless sea, walls packed floor to ceiling with all the books ever written or dreamed of. It was nearly enough to make giving up the world bearable.” ― Michael Crummey - Galore   In a strange way, a summer fishing camp was for a fishermen, nearly enough to make giving up the world bearable. Remarkable in their undisclosed number, some were squatter camps on crown land, some were built and furnished better than their houses on the mainland. Attempts to rid the islands of these places have come and gone - some government orders left to linger on the slush piles of more than one bureaucratic conflict of interest. This may be the essence of what a "Can't see Cove" really is. A windowed room or shack afloat on an endless sea.   Steven Rhude, Wolfville...

      I always get a sense when driving throughout Newfoundland that there is a secret on the edge of disclosure. It may be hidden inside a coastal house, or lingering like a spirit around a wharf at dusk. It's like that feeling you get as you approach a group of strangers and they become reticent. You sense they're protecting something. That's what I love about the place, you just know the story goes deeper than clapboard. This mindset invariably leads me to a visual event. It usually starts with something familiar; a house, a boat, or a road etc, and then I reinscribe it for something else... as one would reinscribe an object for further contemplation. The road is the most tangible metaphor I can think of for exploration. As we drive the rules of the road influence what we see around us. However, between the rules there are no directions for us, other than our will to keep moving. We may only see an unromantic image of road and barrens viewed through...

 "This is not the 1960s, Mr. Sweetland. This move isn't being forced on the town. We will pay to resettle the residents, as we've been asked to do. But we will not be responsible for some lunatic alone in the middle of the Atlantic once everyone else is gone." "Me being the lunatic." "There won't be any ferry service after the move. Which means no supplies coming in. There will be no phone service. No online banking, no poker. No electricity. By definition, I'd think anyone out here on their own would have to be certifiable." The government man glanced at his watch. "You've been made aware of the September deadline." "I been made aware." "There are people hoping to make the move across as early as this fall, which means everyone would have to sign by the first." Michael Crummy, Sweetland Water Taxi, oil on masonite, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude Definition of Water Taxi: "a small boat on a...

 Eight Men with Dory (Upper Island Cove), oil on canvas, 24" x 34", Steven Rhude “He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as 'el mar' which is masculine.They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea       Simone La : So Rhude time for another Q&A session.The nature of two artists living and working together i...

                    House of Lace, (Ochre Pit), Emma Butler Gallery, oil on canvas, 36" x 48", Steven Rhude For centuries in art, certainly since the renaissance, there has always been depicted for contemplation a house configured in mind and spirit. It may take numerous shapes and forms, but invariably it is not just "a house", but  "the house." However, whose house it is may often be up for debate, and to whom the house belongs is still collectively an issue in the twenty first century. Some consider it a house prepared - a spiritual house, others think of it as a psychological house - one in which we associate our multitude of experiences within a structure of faith and mental latitude, rooms of growth, sex, and change... rooms of sadness and grief... rooms of death and  revelation, rooms of  social exchange and the expression of ideas that attach or eventually dissolve within the walls of our individual or personal mem...

                        A Moment at Youghall Beach, O/C, 40" x 60", private collection, Steven Rhude "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul."  Simone Weil In this age of the digital revolution, the beach, wherever it may be, may become the most sensible and tangible place to reflect on for our well being - body and soul. When we are on a beach it cleanses our collective predisposition to ponder the intransigent qualities of our existence. A beach washes those concerns away. Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS