Joel Aleister Richardson (born October 15, 1969), (a.k.a. Jimmy Swann), is a Canadian artist, filmmaker and award-winning athlete. Richardson became widely known for his controversial clash with Toronto's Mayor,

Rob Ford Robert Bruce Ford (May 28, 1969 – March 22, 2016) was a Canadian politician and businessman who served as the 64th mayor of Toronto from 2010 to 2014. Before and after his term as mayor, Ford was a city councillor representing Ward 2 Etobi ...

. His work is extensive, ranging from oil on canvas, portraits and landscapes... to his unique style of flash mob performance

street art Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art. Street art has evolved from the early forms of defiant graff ...

, which closed streets in the heart of the Canadian financial district. He was an invited participant to the

Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a protest Social movement, movement against economic inequality and the Campaign finance, influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial District, Manhattan, Wall S ...

main art show in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, which took place at the J. P. Morgan Building on

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC) and has over 20

IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

credits.

Early life

Joel's childhood was spent growing up in

Owen Sound Owen Sound ( 2021 Census population 21,612) is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. The county seat of Grey County, it is located at the mouths of the Pottawatomi and Sydenham Rivers on an inlet of Georgian Bay. The primary tourist attract ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. He made a name for himself as an up-and-coming long distance runner, and in 1988 met future Olympic gold medalist,

Matthew Birir Matthew Kiprotich Birir (born 5 July 1972) is a former athlete from Kenya, winner of 3000 m steeplechase at the 1992 Summer Olympics. Biography Born in Eldama Ravine, Matthew Birir started running, when he attended at the famous St. Patrick's ...

and his brother

Jonah Birir Jonah Birir (born December 27, 1971, in Eldama Ravine, Koibatek) is a former Kenyan middle-distance runner. In 1988 he won the World Junior Championships held in Sudbury, Canada, over 800 metres, and at the 1990 World Junior Championships he wo ...

at the World Junior Championships in

Sudbury, Ontario Sudbury, officially the City of Greater Sudbury is the largest city in Northern Ontario by population, with a population of 166,004 at the 2021 Canadian Census. By land area, it is the largest in Ontario and the fifth largest in Canada. It is a ...

. At the age of seventeen Richardson traveled to

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where he lived in a mud hut with the Birir's in a tiny village named Metipso, in the central highlands of Kenya.

Artistic Beginnings

In 1992, after returning to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

from spending four months on the Gaza/Israeli border, Richardson was hospitalized for undisclosed reasons. After spending a month in the hospital he rented a studio in the infamous 888 Dupont, a former factory filled with artists, musicians and hustlers. The atmosphere was a perfect storm of creativity, subversion and a shared sense of community that fueled one of the most prolific periods of his career. Two years later Joel returned to Metipso, where he would paint the people and landscapes that had so inspired him as a young athlete. These paintings would later be displayed at his first major exhibition at the

Tom Thomson Thomas John Thomson (August 5, 1877July 8, 1917) was a Canadian artist active in the early 20th century. During his short career, he produced roughly 400 oil sketches on small wood panels and approximately 50 larger works on canvas. His w ...

Memorial Gallery.

Grenada

While at 888 Dupont, Richardson met with former members of

Maurice Bishop Maurice Rupert Bishop (29 May 1944 – 19 October 1983) was a Grenadian revolutionary and the leader of New Jewel Movement – a Marxist–Leninist party which sought to prioritise socio-economic development, education, and black liberation ...

's militia and made arrangements to travel to

Grenada Grenada ( ; Grenadian Creole French: ) is an island country in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea at the southern end of the Grenadines island chain. Grenada consists of the island of Grenada itself, two smaller islands, Carriacou and Pe ...

to paint. This eventually led him to live four months in Grenada with a fundamentalist

Rastafarian Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is a religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control ...

family, where he painted over seventy-five paintings.

Guatemala

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...

, Richardson met stock broker, Johnny English(alias). Three days later, Joel narrowly escaped an attack by banditos that left one man shot dead. These were life-changing experiences that dramatically affected his work. Finance became a major theme, and his relationship with English would inspire the yet-to-be released documentary highlighting English's eventual flight from the markets, by motorcycle, into the

Sahara Desert , photo = Sahara real color.jpg , photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972 , map = , map_image = , location = , country = , country1 = , ...

Suitman

Over the years that followed, Richardson and stock broker Johnny English would stay in contact, and through several trips to Europe, particularly to English's Options Trading Firm in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, Richardson got a glimpse into the wacky world of

Derivative (finance) In finance, a derivative is a contract that ''derives'' its value from the performance of an underlying entity. This underlying entity can be an asset, index, or interest rate, and is often simply called the "underlying". Derivatives can be u ...

. Taking what he learned from English, Joel created his own large equations based on the

Black–Scholes model The Black–Scholes or Black–Scholes–Merton model is a mathematical model for the dynamics of a financial market containing derivative investment instruments. From the parabolic partial differential equation in the model, known as the Blac ...

, and replacing certain numbers with a figure of a man in a suit.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Joel 1969 births Living people Canadian painters Artists from Toronto