Dear Everyone,
I’ve received all your heartfelt Birthday wishes and appreciate all who wrote to wish me one.
Life, in the long sense, is a trial. It’s also one also filled and balanced with moments of great fulfillment. My work is my life, and with the great studio I now work out of, surrounded by all my life’s accumulations, have enabled me to spend most of this life where I’m most happy and can do the most good for everything and everyone. I don’t feel I have many friends, at least in the sense that I’m on the phone or visiting with them like in my 20’s, 30’s, and most of my 40’s. So my work will have to suffice.
Fortunately with my work, I feel ceaseless energy and optimism. Writer Mike Baron and I have all new Nexus material coming out in comic strip form, which is the format I most wish to pursue. Dark Horse will thankfully be taking over the publishing with these huge volumes of collected strips, so I can concentrate on what I’m most suited for—drawing, painting, creating. I’ve always believed in the strip format—it being the one that begat comic books in the first place--and want to be part of establishing its revival in a way it hasn’t experienced since the 1950’s. It’s something different that no one else is doing, and for me, “different” is always good.
When people don’t step up to make beneficial changes to any part of their lives, expect none to occur. Nothing happens without working towards something. To those who take the difficult and “different” route, may those risks and changes be those that effect all lives for the better. We all have the capacity to do so, and it’s the “human” thing to do.
With my appreciation,
Steve Rude, now a healthy 62 years old
New Years eve
Mon. Dec. 31, 2018
2 comments
Steve. Happy Birthday!! I don’t tell you often enough how wonderful your work is. I do tell my friends and family. I’m almost 62 and I have one favorite book – Nexus. I have read so many books through the years but your’s is the best. Your art hangs on our wall in the form of a portrait you did our dog, Rita. Rave reviews! I’ve tried to go to your shows, participate in whatever you have going on and do what I can to help when I can. And I will again. Your career needs to continue. Art is beauty and yours reflects heart, emotion and precision that conveys all that and more. In my estimation you are this generation’s Kirby. I know those are big shoes but your work speaks for itself. Please understand you have a vast array of friends. We’re out here and you speak to us in ways that phones and visits can’t. Thank you for everything you do and bring to our lives. Best wishes and Happy New Year!
Benton Edwards
Wishing you many more!