Joel Richardson

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 France, Richardson got a glimpse into the wacky world of Derivative (finance). Taking what he learned from English, Joel created his own large equations based on the Black–Scholes model, and replacing certain numbers with a figure of a man in a suit.

In 1992, after returning to Canada 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 Memorial Gallery.

Joel's childhood was spent growing up in Owen Sound, Ontario. He made a name for himself as an up-and-coming long distance runner, and in 1988 met future Olympic gold medalist, Matthew Birir and his brother Jonah Birir at the World Junior Championships in Sudbury, Ontario. At the age of seventeen Richardson traveled to Kenya where he lived in a mud hut with the Birir's in a tiny village named Metipso, in the central highlands of Kenya.

Joel Aleister Richardson (born October 15, 1969), (a.k.a. Jimmy Swann), is a Canadian artist, filmmaker and award-winning athlete.