Steven Rhude - Paintings/Drawings

Water Taxi, oil on masonite, 24" x 24", Emma Butler Gallery   What makes me happy? Well it’s typical of me to look up the etymology of the word “Happy” first. What I found was the old English approach - lucky, favoured by fortune, greatly pleased and content. Happy medium, happy ending, oh happy days…one of my favourites is “happy hour”. I’ve always believed that a painter operates at a particular crossroads. It’s a problematic location, but assuming that I’m living in that strange twilight between the tangible world I belong to and the painted world I create, well that is one aspect of living that makes me happy.  Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

  Port de Grave Peddler, oil on canvas, 38" x 41", Steven Rhude "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."  Henry David Thoreau Making subject matter is a preoccupation with painters that value narrative. However, narrative is not always so willing or apparent a partner to the painter until well after the fact; that is, well after a visual encounter may have taken place and time has lapsed. The painter relies on memory, notes, drawings, etc., to re kindle the experience, but eventually it is the unpacking of a scene by the subconscious and the recurrence of its characteristics that evolve to the point where a commitment to canvas is made, and a painting is eventually executed.  I'm particularly fond of the fishing community of Port de Grave, Newfoundland. It's one of those places that seems to transport me to a particular crossroads where I tend to operate. It's that strange twilight between the tangible world I belong to and th...

You have to wonder how many times "They stand at the ships railings in woolen coats to watch cathedrals of ice moving south..." Hard Light, Michael Crummy Cathedral of Ice, oil on canvas, 17" x 23", Steven Rhude You: You read books about the rock, you go there, you picture this and that, imagine the worst and the best, you observe water and ice, barrens and cities. You interview, draw, debate, discuss, ruminate, and in the end go back to the people that initiated your passion. You do not know it from the inside, yet you know the measure of it from the outside, it's all you have. He looks at you beneath brows like straw. He asks you... no, he tells you one day, 'to make sure you never let it become a hobby'. You make a promise you will keep. Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

  Study of a Fish Plant Worker, oil on canvas, 20" x 23", Steven Rhude, at  www.emmabutler.com Her job duty was evident and simple, to cut, clean and trim fish or seafood prior to marketing or further processing. Specifically, she was to cut fish, separate fillets, and remove scrap parts using a knife. Also, there was the issue of checking fillets to determine optimal size of fillet sections, cut those sections according to specifications and place in a container to be weighed. Her wages range from thirteen to eighteen dollars per hour. He had seen fish plant workers from Canso to Newfoundland, their shift work day and night. He recalled his routine trips to the Co-op for groceries. He could see the fish plant from the parking lot - see the workers in their rubber boots out on break getting some sun or a smoke - see the life on their aprons and facial expressions - but that was a long time ago when National Sea Products employed around six hundred people at the plant, before...

  Dory at Madrocks, oil on canvas, 38" x 41", Steven Rhude  www.secordgallery.com "Being able to hold the thread of a painting tightly is the mark of a good artist. Such textural elements must be stretched tight if the friction of the elements is to be effective. Lesser artists may attempt to work with these ideas of texture, but something usually gives, the line falls slack, the suspension sags and the works don't have that captured energy that we see here. For Rhude, there's tension in the almost surreal contrast of his subjects which are often placed in paradoxical situations.You can feel the slight rub of confusion - why is the buoy on the overturned boat? How can the shed be in the surf? In that moment of disjointed comprehension, behind the smooth, enjoyable surface of the painting, Rhude's texture opens up a culture of inquiry - the political meaning of an unemployed fisherman for example - a visual expression of our society's pressing questions. R...

Portrait of Raymond E. Ivany, 15th President of Acadia University, oil on canvas, 48" x 40", Steven Rhude, Collection of Acadia University      The story goes that in 1961, Robert Rauschenberg was invited to participate in a show at Galerie Iris Clert in Paris. All the invited artists were requested to create a portrait of the gallery owner Iris Clert. One artist, Robert Rauschenberg who left  things to the last minute decided to send a telegram to Iris saying "this is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so/Robert Rauschenberg." Clert, so it goes, in a fit of anger threw the telegram in the garbage only to reclaim it after reconsidering the audacity of the gesture and hung the telegram on the gallery wall with the other portraits. This was the sort of rupture in modernist thinking that has led us to constantly reevaluate what exactly a portrait is or is not as the function of portraiture was pushed into the foreground - beyond the subject.   "Nothing in a portr...

  He used to think about her during a hurricane. Going to a hardware store with no name and purchasing supplies and preparing to ensure the storm doesn't take them up in it's wake. Strange though, the thrill of her just continuing to paint as the ocean rose, breaching the beach and flooding their property and their only car - a Doge Colt of all things... not caring for the aftermath. Too much Turner perhaps; too many turbulent paintings in the carousel of western man. But she was right.       Now Fiona is destined (he likes her name).  Yet he wonders: "why do hurricanes consolidate circumstances?" He checks for batteries and flashlights.   Steven Rhude, Wolfville