Curriculum Vitae

Born
Noranda, Quebec, 1959

Media

• Oil egg tempera, watercolour, etching

Education

• The Ontario College of Art, Toronto, Ontario
• One year off campus program, Florence, Italy

Awards

• Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, 1982

Selected Permanent Collections

• City of Moncton, New Brunswick
• Nortel
• Royal Netherlands Embassy, Ottawa, Ontario
• Private Collections in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Netherlands, South Africa

Selected Solo Shows

• Zwicker's Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1992, 1995, 1997
• Pilar Shepard Gallery, P.E.I. 1996,1996
• Gallery 1889, Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, 1994
• Lyghtesome Gallery, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, 1993, 1994
• Selected Group Shows
• St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
• Fog Forest Gallery, Sackville, New Brunswick, 1993
• Georgian College, Ontario

Member of Board, Visual Arts Nova Scotia, 1996 and 1997

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The following comments are from a catalogue produced by Steven Rhude and Simone Labuschagne. They have been reproduced here with their kind permission.

The work of Steven Rhude is an ongoing visual documentary of maritime coastal life. Aspects of this life are shared with us through his use of composite imagery, common and uncommon symbols, and the representation of cultural artifacts. Drawing directly from his immediate experience and environment, Steven has accumulated a collection of visual metaphors which exert their appeal upon us as we discover in them emotion both animated and deeply poetic. Images seem to conjure up a parade like quality of visual elements, shapes and coloured patterns which in turn contribute to the lyricism and humor of a coastal event. Steven's ocular and narrative understanding of his maritime home reflect an old mystery, one which muses on the resilience of coastal life despite the continued pressures of urban values.

Steven Rhude is an emerging artist. He is producing original and ambitious work both in subject matter and scale with a fully assured technical hand. His viewpoint is direct and forceful through situations central and immediate to his own experience. One cannot view this experience without being engaged.

Simone J. Labuschagne

Steven comments:

For years I wasn't interested in social or economic issues, I was only interested in painting. I avoided the boat as a subject and concentrated on the coastline and sea close to my home. Now, several years later the boats' presence and importance is decidedly relevant and more integrated in my thinking.

A fishing shack, a carved and painted buoy, a chair made of rope and burlap, a brightly painted skiff, a glass float, traps, tables, and oil lamp, wash basins, tins, hooks, old gloves, birdhouses and whirligigs - when I encounter these things I'm fascinated. After all, these things are part of the lives of those people to whom they belong. Remarkable because they express something of their mystery, character and relationship with the natural world.

The use of primary colours seems perfectly natural to me in a coastal environment. I'm often reminded of the primary abstracts of Piet Mondrian when looking at the hull design of a Cape Islander. One day when I encountered some freshly painted model dorys hanging on a clothesline to dry, I thought about the vibrancy of their makers pallette. Whether a motif, symbol or an incidental, I will always see these boats hanging from a line as art.

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