Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

Woman Listening, o/b, 5" x 8.5", Steven Rhude A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings And crawled head downward down a blackened wall And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells. -  T.S. Elliot 

Fishing School, Rug Hooking, Laura Kenney Roxanne During WW2, Near Canso , NS, o/b, Steven Rhude "The working-class man's attempt to blur class boundaries by wearing the bowler was satirized in the early films of Charlie Chaplin. Eventually, the bowler became an icon of the bourgeoisie, as immortalized in Magritte's famous painting of a middle-class man wearing a bowler (Robinson 1993: 166) and, after the Second World War, was worn mainly by middle-class businessmen." - http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/117987.html We in Nova Scotia challenge this premise! Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

House of Film, The McNeil House For Wayward Youth, Chester, NS, oil on board, 48" x 48", Steven Rhude A quick search of Chester, Nova Scotia reveals an image of sailing, cocktails on a veranda overlooking the harbour, and money - lots of it - piles of it in fact. Sir Christopher Ondaatje resides there during the summer and refers to it this way: "A lot of people know about Chester, N.S., but nobody talks about it. They simply don’t want anyone else to go there." Concurrently, a general view in Wikipedia describes the village thus: "Chester is one of the wealthiest communities in the province as a result of being a holiday and resort destination, with many seasonal and year-round estates and mansions. The nearby waters of Mahone Bay and its numerous islands are well known for yachting and have made the Chester Yacht Club into a cruising destination." Apparently, I see a different place. Since the film tax credit disaster and the exodus of ar...

Portrait of Caplin Cove, Nfld, oil on board, 30" x 48", Steven Rhude                                                                The Otherness of Things "Reflected on the surface of the pencil is also the inherited and entangled history for his father's care for this important, and perhaps useful object. There is a certain intimacy suggested. He sharpened it by hand, tactfully. The surface suggests he touched it often in his work. The history to their exposure to each other seems clearly visible - they remember each other in their flesh. Indeed, it seems that he felt, in a certain sense, obligated and responsible for it. He did not simply dispose of it when it became...

Judy - Opening of "Surfing the Ironing Board", Mary E. Black Gallery, Halifax, NS                                                       "Surfing the Ironing Board" Hooked Rugs by Laura Kenney                                             Mary E. Black Gallery in Halifax. The show runs from May 20 - July 10, 2016. "Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each  to take form in the mind of the other. And this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship." - Georg Simmel    ...

Olympia's Cat, oil on board, 12" x 17", Steven Rhude   "Like the prostitute, the cat was discrete but not respectable, neither bourgeois nor working class but rather a bohemian figure flaunted by artists and intellectuals who enjoyed the ‘independent, almost heartless’ character of  the cat." - Jody Berland https://www.academia.edu/1223080/Cat_and_Mouse_Iconographies_of_Nature_and_Desire  "Olympia reclines coolly on her chaise lounge, surveying the viewer (her next client) with a look as clinical as the exchange that's about to take place. Though boasting a fine art-historical pedigree, based as it is on Titian’s Venus of Urbino , the painting caused outrage for rendering its model not as an idealised, ancient goddess but as an unashamedly contemporary whore from Montmartre. Inspired by the Realism of Courbet, as well as Baudelaire’s call for artists to paint “modern life”, Manet said matter-of-factly: “I just paint what I see. Cou...

Essentially, with so many people in the province leaving – people from all walks of life - as a result of poor economic conditions, even poorer political judgement, jobs at any cost to the landscape, and greener pastures abroad, I used this door as an opportunity to explore and remind myself what it was that brought me here in the first place. If ever there was a time to ask “What about Nova Scotia?” this is it. Door in studio Recall Door, oil/wood with text on reverse. Reverse side with text Recall: He recalled her saying he did not seem to have a lot of childhood memories. Perhaps this was true or perhaps it wasn't; yet like a broken movie reel, the film had been spliced together but with a few pieces missing. What he did remember was in stark contrast to his ocean home now, like the pattern of cookie cutter capitalism and its perfect suburban grid. Intercom systems. Elevators with floor buttons scorched by cigarettes. The beige walls of an apart...