Monastery Hallway


 Monastery hallway, oil on panel, 24" x 30".

I once took an inventory of hallways and corridors I could recall in my life. I started with the obvious, my childhood house, apartments, underground parking lots, schools etc, - then I considered secondary hallways like government institutions, hospitals, commercial agencies and the like, places I moved through without any aesthetic sensibility.
Later on I recalled incidental corridors that were repetitious, like in hotels, art school, or civil engineering facilities, and then after school there were house corridors where parties took place. And cottage hallways of summer relief from academic rigor and discipline.
Then I recounted anonymous houses where I restored flooring, long hallways with personal history scored and marked into its grainy disposition, a logic of mind and spirit that took years for me to understand. Thankfully there were doors and windows providing a mental exit when necessary.
However these are the literal corridors of one's daily routine. They require more study in order to assess their underground meaning.
This painting evolved from a liminal sense I had about the past and present. A monastery corridor, like the hallway of the mind, conveying transition from one time to another.

- Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

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