On the parallel plane of art making, Richard Harden does not mince images. The trajectory of his meaning-filled imagination is a lineage soaked through with the force of Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah and Hosea. Such men never won popularity contests. Harden’s landscapes can never be the pretty picture of a lush and verdant paradise, nor will he people his canvas stages with perfectly adjusted beings. His desolate, wracked landscapes reveal the cracks and fissures of creation groaning at the hands of its caretakers, and yet those who have wreaked the havoc are often, oddly, absent. When figures appear in his works, they are mutilated, straining, tragic, misguidedly heroic, or disfigured by human cruelty.