Hardridge’s latest work “Unbridled” is on view at Santa Fe’s Blue Rain Gallery. The artist grew up in central Oklahoma surrounded by the artistic traditions of his culture. His formal training includes a fine arts degree in illustration and painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Later studies at France’s Nadaï Verdon Atelier of Decorative Arts emphasized harmony and composition. Hardridge once painted in a very traditional, muted style until the 2014 death of his father triggered a seismic stylistic change. “I was going through a transitional period in painting,” he said in a telephone interview from Knoxville, Tennessee. “I was studying the beadwork and trying to put together work representing loss and resistance at the same time, and the narrative of Southeast Native removal from Alabama to Oklahoma.”