Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

  A Monastery in Greece, oil on panel. So you're in a monastery in Greece and the first thing you notice upon entering is every female visitor requires a shawl to cover up any unprotected back, shoulder, or a suggestive dress. Of course, everyone goes with the rules of decorum, and then we notice a deep open well filled with coins. You make a wish, they fund their enterprise. You have always had a propensity to explore the cordoned off areas of any institution, so you wander and then lean over a plastered sill and wonder what really constitutes a monastic... (doesn't matter whether man or woman) - to shut oneself off from the secular world of temptation and so forth runs through your thoughts. You like the aesthetics of the green door and then it opens. A millisecond lapses and this individual does sense your presence and looks up briefly - then away. You are now the observer observed. - Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

  Black Door, Greek Monastery (Αντίπαξος), oil on masonite “…I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people…who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born “islomanes”…are direct descendents of the Atlanteans” ― Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus: A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes Steven Rhude Wolfville, NS

The Artist as Journeyman The journey to foreign lands has long been the modus operandi for countless painters, the objectives divergent with each situation. Some artists travel great distances for inspiration and historical study, while others remain within their own country exploring province and region. Conceptually, it's why Edward Hopper went to France to study in his early years of development, tugging at the coat strings of the impressionists, and how Allegheny, Pennsylvania born Mary Cassat, only began to live after ending up in Paris. It’s what happened to Marsden Hartley who found Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia in 1935, and shacked up with the Mason family of fishermen, furnishing an account of island life, and the sudden drowning of Alty and Donny Mason. And it’s where in 1919, the Group of Seven preternaturally formed after Tom Thompson’s death, and pioneered in oil, what was once a sacred Canadian north. We mustn't forget Paul Gauguin, a stock broker turned painter. He lef...

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                                                          Antler Man, oil on canvas, 17" x 30", Steven Rhude He's out of touch with today. The Ashley Book of Knots is his bible - a means of survival and metaphor for when the evenings linger on. The antlers were put up by his father. He volunteers for the local fire department and goes to the legion on Friday nights - when he can. He's built and re built several wharves, and buried a few of his mates. His last name could be Leblanc, or Dobson, or Murphy ... really doesn't matter now. The narrative is all that counts from here on in. Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

                            The Fortunate Isles (Two Boats, Salmon Cove), oil on canvas, 38.5" x 58", Steven Rhude Fool: Where are we now? Jester: As usual, you're on the edge - this time gazing towards the Fortunate Isles.  Fool: Oh Christ, and what are they prey tell? Jester: Hey, you apprenticed and took the job... after four hundred years, I'm just fixing on retirement. So, if you wish to know, you are standing on the margin between the known world and the under world. It's the last car to Elysian Fields [1] my dear fool, as Mr. James Lee Burke once wrote -  but for you it may be thought to be a utopia, somewhere in the Atlantic ocean . Fool: So who gets in? Jester: Well, the odd mortal is allowed in, but that is up to the heroic and the righteous. Depends on what they see.  Fool: So you're talking about the after life. Jester: Yes, to the Greeks it was a concern. But for you it must be a a modern p...