Richard Haden was born in Frankfort Kentucky and began his Art education at the University of Kentucky and maintains a life long progressive autodidactic life style. He moved to Los Angeles, California. His first solo shows were at the Anhalt Gallery in Los Angeles followed by a solo in Washington DC; Group shows at F.I.A.C., Paris, the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, LAICA in Los Angeles, Mey Mac, France through Boudon Lebon gallery, the Boise Art Museum and others.
Drawn to political ferment, he moved to the Lower East Side of New York and became active in the homesteading / anti-gentrification movement. As an activist Haden helped provide cheap housing for those willing to take control of abandon property. While successful in saving several buildings from Real Estate speculators, the movement eventually came to a head and sparked the Thompson Square riots—Haden was in the thick of it. Also around the same time Haden Joined the New York / Nicaragua Construction Brigade which traveled to Nicaragua to build housing for the Sandinistas. It was upon his return to the States that he developed a long standing relationship with Allan Stone, whose gallery unwittingly helped support many of Haden's future adventures.
The 90s found Haden back on the West Coast, in San Francisco, trying to balance studio time with covert political activities that involved the procurement of medical marijuana and AIDS relief. Haden decided to take time off from the "ART WORLD" to totally immerse himself in "the cause"...Haden finally returned to the studio after about a seven years Hiatus living off the grid--with a move from the 49th parallel (the canadian border) straddling the Cascade Mountains of Washington State--cross-country to south Florida.
Still involved in various progressive community / socio-political concerns....Haden has also taken up long distance endurance running at 51, and competes in various half and full marathons--He will run the New York Marathon, November 6th, 2011. Running has become another expressive as well as a documenting aspect of his work which involves shooting digital stills and recording video and sound while running. The results will be included in upcoming exhibitions.
For Haden, "The point is to always maintain activities outside the studio...as living life today demands a progressive insurgency--an invigorated agency--to live as directly as one can less cloistered all the while looking for those fundamentally sustaining and sustainable means and practices by which we can keep up an enduring enthusiasm and interest outside the trappings of alienating labor-----not in yesterdays modern myths or stuck in endless thoughtful cul-de-sacs---but in creating todays alternatives--- in order to drag it all back in to the work.
Richard Haden lives in Miami, Florida, and part time in San Francisco