Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

  “There is no such thing as passive vision… only active envisioning, that is, the creative construction of a vision from a certain perceptual perspective.”  - Donald Kuspit "I once had a dream a long time ago, in it I saw a boat falling off a cliff." -Steven Rhude Falling Boat, oil on canvas, 54" x 14", private collection When I moved to Nova Scotia in 1990, I vowed to avoid boats as subject matter . I did the same thing when the Harry Potter series came out ; eschew the popular, explore the enigmatic... but for what? and really - why?. However, individual biases dropped as reason prevailed, and conversely dreams intervened as reason devolved. We're all conscious of the cycle of life, and in it art always produces the requisite metaphor whether one makes pictures, or is provoked to ponder them. The boat is the alpha and omega of the Maritimes, and if one lives here long enough, it is accepted as a the big metaphor for ...

                        Blue Hour: Abandoned Fish Plant, Rose Blanche, oil on canvas, 32" x 52", Steven Rhude I took the southwest shore road from Port aux Basque, past Isle aux Morts, Burnt Islands, and Diamond Cove, and then on to Rose Blanche... the end of the line. I noticed a wharf road and parked well away from it's crumbling structure. Looming is an industrial cathedral, now abandoned and in a state of decay. A place that was once a community monument to coastal prosperity and collectivity. I stood there for a while realizing I've had similar experiences like this, back in Sicily, or England, and closer to home where on the way to Halifax, the Windsor textile plant always brings on a feeling of melancholia. The Blue Hour constitutes twilight... that slippage between day and night that is briefly suspended. The sky spills over with ultramarine, cobalt, sapphire, even turquoise before merging with the warmth of the horizo...