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Topic: Don Ritchie
Artist: Madeline Smith
Title: “Angel of the Gap”
Category: Discovering Unsung Heroes
Media: Watercolor
Size: 18” x 22”
My entire life I have always had role models who were important to me, but not
necessarily “heroes”. Don Ritchie changed my perspective on not only what it means to be a
hero, but what it means to ultimately have an impact on someone’s life.
Don Ritchie was a native to Sydney, Australia and lived close to “The Gap”; the most
notorious suicide spot on the continent. Every day for fifty years, Mr. Ritchie would gaze out of
his window with his binoculars and try and rescue any person who needed saving. If he saw a
life on the edge of the cliff, he would persuade them down by inviting them into his house for a
cup of tea to cool down. Of course there were people who were too hurt in their minds to listen
to what he was saying, and many of them fell to their deaths right in front of him, but that didn’t
stop him from continuing to go outside and attempt to talk others down again and again. Over the
course of fifty years, Mr. Ritchie has saved what he says is 200 people, but his family thinks the
number is closer to 500.
I discovered Mr. Ritchie's story via my Twitter feed on an account called @People; an
account that applauds the great, selfless acts of citizens around the world. I read as much about
Don Ritchie as I could from other sources, studied different pictures and wanted to paint him in
his most comfortable state: an open-button shirt sitting inside his house. My goal when I laid out
this piece was to portray the softness of his heart by using watercolor as my prime medium,
watering down his facial features more and straying away from solely color. Each and every act
he committed was a unique act of love, which is why the red in his shirt individualizes him from
anything else in the whole painting. The clock above the countertop is significant to tea-time, for
four-o’clock is the universal time for afternoon tea.
Upon his death in May of 2013, a memorial was carved in his honor on the edge of The
Gap that reads, “Don Ritchie Grove: Hold onto HOPE. There is always HELP.”