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The Artist as Journeyman: Essay by Simone Labuschagne

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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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Avalon, Short Stories in Paint, Emma Butler Gallery

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  View works here:  https://www.emmabutler.com/rhude_2024.htm
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Antler Man

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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
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Fortunate Isles

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                            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 principle... something linked to literature, music, film, a
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Tiverton, Shed Doorway

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                                           Tiverton Shed Doorway, oil on canvas, 18" x 18", Steven Rhude It's human nature to pry, to mentally open a door, and to want to see behind what has become a secret society.  Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS
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Out Port Girls (Girls in Service)

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                                            Out Port Girls (Bonavista Light), oil on canvas, 24" x 36', Steven Rhude    'I can't think of anything the [maids] didn't do They got the coal, cleaned and washed and got the big copper pot boiling to wash the sheets with lye . . . . They had a regular routine for the housekeeping and cooking . . . . I was 5, 6, 7, 8; they were probably 17, 18, 19 but they seemed adult. They stayed for years, some of them, and usually left to get married.” So recalled Janet Story, a St. John’s nurse and nursing archivist, of her childhood years during the interwar era. Janet Kelly, a prominent city businesswoman, remembered that “almost everybody had maids. We did when I was a young kid. My father worked in St. Mary’s Bay, so we had a source, people who knew the family and would trust us with a young girl coming to St. John’s. It was not just the well-off had maids,” Kelly continued. “The middle class, if they could manage it at all, had
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Oxymoron

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                                                 Cape Spear (Still Life), oil on canvas, 24" x 36", Steven Rhude You're not one to take a building at face value, that's why you always go around back just to see what's lurking there. So you try to evoke the atmosphere or emotional resonance of it's location by stepping inside the mind of 'the building' and the mind of 'the place', and by extension, yourself the painter. There is nothing really still about the life at Cape Spear. Even though the day is idyllic and nature has called a ceasefire for now, you know when the wind whips, and the gales come with unimaginable force - alone, you would probably cower like a spooked dog. So the title of this work is definitely a bit of an oxymoron. However, you put the day in your pocket and take it home. Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS   
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