Homme Made - Dundee Law
Art Is Freedom
2025. Birds of a Feather. A tribute to expressive freedom. Virgil Abloh—who turned fashion into a language. Dennis Edney—who defended the right to speak, even when silenced. XLife visionaries. One in style. One in justice. Seven painters. One canvas. Freely expressed.
2024-2025, Rosehip, White Rose Project: It began quietly in March, with an easel next to a wild rose bed on our Alberta Legislature grounds, and later next to a Millwoods Sikh Temple. Nineteen painters were invited to add paint young and old, from all walks of life including Canada's child, Omar Khadr to Two Punjabi ladies and a (hidden bearded Sikh man) Crows Nest on the backside of the canvas that acted as protection for the Crow's eggs.
Opera of Roses
by Three Painters
November 8, 2025 – Indigenous Veterans Day, Canada pauses to honour First Nations, Inuit, and Métis veterans. Established in 1994, this day corrects a long silence: for decades, Indigenous soldiers were excluded from Remembrance Day ceremonies, despite serving with distinction in every major conflict since the War of 1812. Indigenous Veterans Day stands alongside November 11, Remembrance Day, as a reminder that we are all treaty people. More than 12,000 Indigenous men and women served in the World Wars and Korea, many returning to a country that denied them equal recognition. Their courage, resilience, and sacrifice are now honoured each November 8. Here in Edmonton, on Treaty 6 territory, this day resonates deeply. It is not about separation from Canada’s story—it is about completing it. We are all 🍁US, responsible for the evils of war.
11 Days in November, To our kids, grandkids, and the next 7 generations. My Remembrance Day post. Anti-war leaflets were distributed outside the gates of the Edmonton Folk Festival as Canada’s Governor General Award–winning, Juno Award–winning singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn took to the main stage on a summer night in 2013. Best known for his politically charged anthem “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” Cockburn, a Christian, had long stood at the crossroads of music and moral reckoning. The original oil painting—created in Edmonton between 2000 and 2001—depicted Cockburn strumming a ukulele in Lake Louise, Alberta. In 2013, I returned to that canvas and replaced the ukulele with a rocket launcher, staging the act outside the festival gates. The moment was filmed and shared on YouTube, prompting responses from both the Edmonton Folk Festival and Bruce Cockburn himself. In 2015, I painted over the entire canvas in abstract—transforming it into a memorial for the nine Afghan boys killed by machine gun and rocket fire while gathering firewood in the Pech Valley. Then, in 2025, I painted on the backside of that same canvas (The Roots), completing a work that had taken 25 years in the making. The band The Roots took the main stage, while I added the final strokes, joined once again by a friendly gathering of fest volunteers and folk-loving attendees. What began as a critique became a ritual. The painting holds its contradictions—rocket launchers, ukuleles, grief, and grace. It is no longer a canvas, but a witness: to war’s echo, to forgive, but never forget, by all who gather on November 11th to remember.
Since 2007, ciactivist.org has stood as a center for Civil Information Activism. Not a newsfeed, but a civic meditation—where democracy, faith, and nature bridge and witness through art. Doug Brinkman.
Active Citizenship, Free News Sharing,
and Social Artistry
Painter’s Notes — 2025‑11‑11 New Year Art Project, 2020–2025. Another painting day before Remembrance Day—a holiday to honour sacrifice in ceremony. Today I added implements of war: tanks on the canvas, skaters on ice before the 11th hour, November 11th. An outdoor winter art show & tell, and Listen—without snow.
XLi
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Below: 1979, the year the Oilers joined the NHL, and the year I migrated from Toronto to Edmonton, in a Ford F‑100 pickup to take a job at the Edmonton Sun. My first Alberta painting, oils, titled Between Friends, depicts the Montana–Alberta foothills and snow‑covered mountains.
Beginning in March, during Black History Month, seven painters from diverse walks of life gathered on the Alberta Legislature grounds to launch my Birds of a Feather art project. Their first collaborative canvas turned my lens and brushes toward the femininity of faith, democracy, and nature.
The painting did not stay still. It travelled across Edmonton through civil information actions (Art Show & Tell and LISTEN), finding audiences at the University of Alberta Students’ Union Building and Hope City Church in Mill Woods.
I titled the XLife work HOMME MADE – DUNDEE LAW. Dundee Law is a historic hill in Dundee, Scotland, the birthplace of Dennis Edney (1946–2023), the Canadian defence lawyer renowned for his advocacy in the Omar Khadr case. Homme Made is also the name of a track by Lupe Fiasco and Kaelin Ellis, featuring spoken word by Virgil Abloh, released in 2020. Both men—Edney with his fearless defence of justice, Abloh with his boundary‑breaking artistry—inspired me in shaping my own fashion line, LISTEN Label (formerly The Speaker’s Banned Speech and Wear), created in response to the ban on my art‑clothing inside the Legislature. I first heard Dennis Edney speak in a Unitarian church. His words compelled me to cover the story of Canada’s child, Omar Khadr, a profound case largely avoided by corporate media but one I pursued as a citizen.
Dennis Edney defended the voiceless, proving that law can be a shield for humanity. Virgil Abloh broke boundaries, proving that culture itself can be a canvas for freedom. Together, their legacies remind us: resistance is not only fought in courts or galleries, but in the daily act of creation. And as Jello Biafra, frontman of the Dead Kennedys, declared: "Don’t hate the media, become the media!"
Doug Brinkman's
Birds of a Feather 13th Art Project
Faith, Democracy, and Nature
