She was out walking her dog one day when inspiration struck from the most unlikely of places – right beneath her.
Artist Jane Richardson and Thurleigh, her pooch, had been walking up and down the hill near her home on Eagleridge Drive in West Vancouver last year, after having recently moved back to the mainland from Sechelt, when she observed faces in the pavement on Falcon Road.
“I was walking my dog up and down this hill every day to take him for a walk on Seaview Trail, and I kept seeing these cracks in the road and they had kind of … little faces, and personalities, and after a while I walked around them instead of stepping on them, if you know what I mean,” says Richardson.
Moved by the cracks in the road that had been filled in with a dark compound that gave them definition, body and soul, at least in the eye of the artist, Richardson set out to sketch them.
“I was just goofing around with it and they turned out nice and graphic and I actually made them into cards and coasters and trading cards,” she says.
She also compiled her sketches, which she later immortalized, sharpened up and coloured in using a computer program, into a book called Road Crack Dudes. The first iteration of the Dudes came out last year, while a second book in the series was put out by Richardson last month.
“I gave out quite a few books to the neighbourhood, just saying ‘Hey, I’m your new neighbour – and isn’t this funny?’ and the response back was incredible,” says Richardson.
“I had neighbours stopping me saying that I’d made their Christmas because they had a grandchild over and they took the grandchild out looking at the cracks in the road.”
Inspiration can strike anywhere, you simply have to open yourself up to art and the world, says Richardson, as she relays a story of one woman who told her that she’d never look at roads the same way again.
“She’d never noticed there was something there and as soon as she looked at it she could see it too.”
Like the first version of Road Crack Dudes, the second one, called Road Crack Dudes: Book 2, features a fantastical story, alongside Richardson’s colourful sketches, that includes Sir Thurlow of Inglewood (a stand-in for Richardson’s dog Thurleigh, who is photographed alongside the road cracks themselves for scale) as he interacts with the various characters that Richardson has conjured from the cracks, such as Bella the Ballerina and the Simple Man, also known as Zack.
“I did it originally as a bit of a joke,” she says, but: “I’ve had a lot of fun with it and the neighbours have had a hoot with it. … I digitally made them stronger, more graphic, filled in the gaps and everything, and then I punched up the colour.”
While Richardson is nonchalant about Road Crack Dudes – she’s retired and in large part undertook the project as a creative and fun outlet while she helped take care of her aging parents – she’s no stranger to the art world.
The longtime proprietor of Leighdon Studio Gallery, Richardson has been painting landscapes and abstract pieces for decades, in addition to publishing works such as her long-running Artists of British Columbia anthology and other passion projects, like Road Crack Dudes.
Richardson abandoned the bricks and mortar gallery in West Vancouver when her and husband left for Sechelt in 2010, but she’s maintained it as a home-based business.
“This goofing around in the digital media for me is completely different and I just found, hey, it’s kind of fun,” she says about her foray into making art inspired by the cracks in the road.
“It’s kind of gone full circle. I think I’ve got it out of my system now.”
While she only has a few copies of Road Crack Dudes left, those interested in Richardson’s work can visit her website at leighdon.ca.
Her advice for other artists looking to get inspired by the world around them – by the soaring birds, the wide open plains, the greenery of forests, or even the cracks in the road – is just to go out and try it.
“If you get a design you like – here’s some things you can do with it. You can produce it,” says Richardson.
“I like to encourage people to express themselves and this is just something that came by the way.”
