Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

A series of paintings exhibited in Inverness at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts. The Burning - 1, oil on panel, 24"x 24", Steven Rhude The Burning - 2, oil on panel, 24"x 24", Steven Rhude The Burning - 3, oil on panel, 24"x 24", Steven Rhude The Burning, - 4, oil on panel, 24"x 24", Steven Rhude The burning - 5, oil on panel, 24"x 24", Steven Rhude Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

 The Life magazine scam - "We need a picture of your house for a layout on how ugly houses are before the aluminum siding is added".  - from the movie The Tin Men , 1987 dark comedy, written and directed by Barry Levinson Before Tin Town, o/c, 36" x 48", Emma Butler Gallery  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXBgEpUlPVg Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

"There is a dependence in the region that breeds a culture of defeatism."  (Stephen Harper, CBC News, May 30, 2002) An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterised by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs.[6] Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalised education.[6] In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education (although citizenship was also largely hereditary). Wikipedia "There's unfortunately a view of too many people in Atlantic Canada that it's only through government favours that there's going to be economic progress, or that's what you look to …That kind of can't-do attitude is a problem in this country but it's obviously more serious in regions that have had have-not status for a long time."  (Stephen Harper, Toronto Sun, Ma...

Phantom, Steven Rhude, o/p, 24"x48", Argyle Fine Art The question on our lips is no longer "why?" Or, "how did this happen?" It's too late for that.  There is a sense that we are now rummaging through the post modern junkyard and looking for answers. It need not necessarily be only a rational search. This is where the artist comes back into the cultural picture; armed with material from the past, and contextualizing it in the present. “Society needs symbols, myths, narratives…and modernity cannot just be rationalization”, explains Jeffrey Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology and Co-Director, Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.  “We need to understand the power, the energy and the glue that keeps civil society together and motivates people”, from Occupy to Tahrir Square, says Alexander, by trying to redefine the cultural in social theory. Myths, narratives and iconic symbols have disappeared in the course...

Glen Road Foot Bridge, Riverdale, Toronto, Silverpoint drawing, 1984  A foot bridge at Shelbourne and Bloor, Riverdale.  He remembered preparing the paper for the precious metal point. An artist friend obsessed with the drawings of the old masters, had resurrected an old formula. "Use it - you'll know what it was like... you know, to do what they did."      It would eventually oxidize.  So be it,  didn't everything?  First an earthy green, then slowly and inexorably, into a Renaissance nut brown. The kind people associated with old master reproductions. But how many really had the chance to hold a real one in their hands, in a museum cabinet drawing room ... He didn't think so. In Toronto, bridges were a fact of life. He always felt a little unsure when he approached this one, on Glen Road, especially when another person stepped onto the bridge threshold at the same time, from the other side. He could see him. Describe...

Describing Maison portable Chen has written, "the house can be a utopian space, virtual, imaterial, spiritual, a 'space between' . This is why the real house has no address. Chen Zhen - Chinese Artist The Bootlegger's House, o/p, 18" x 30", Steven Rhude  Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

Road to Barrachois Wharf, o/p, 20"x 24", Steven Rhude "This is enjoyment. It's sort of hard to explain," he said, as he finished tagging his traps. "It's just one of those things, there's no extra pressure. It's just one of those things you feel natural doing. So you just go out and it falls together for me. As the old saying goes, it's what you make of it."   Dwayne Joudrie, Fisherman From the Truro Daily News, April, 24th, 2013