Doug Brinkman
Birds of a Feather Art Project
Faith, Democracy, and Nature

2021, Broken Tree "Art is made for people to react. Having a position means that what you are doing is needed and it is creating change. In the long term, many people will appreciate it." Venezuelan Woman, 2016, Fire and Rain art project. Show & Tell, Listen.
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🌿 Three Grazing Takahē in the Rocky Mountain Grass. Paint was added outside the Alberta Legislature on April Fool's Day and inside Edmonton City Hall on Good Friday. April is Takahē Awareness Month in New Zealand. Tribute painting to Chicago's Virgil Abloh, 2019, Figures of Speech, Unified, Red Zipper Tie began with two Cree brothers adding paint inside the infamous BLM Pekiwewin homeless encampment.
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Art is Freedom 

2026‑04‑13, Painter's Notes, Easter Painting: My seventh painting project of the year came to a quiet close Sunday. I began the sixth one beside the rose garden on Good Friday, then later moved to Herman Poulin’s Service Through Christ statue—stage right of the people’s house of democracy, the Alberta Legislature. Throughout Easter week I settled into the daily rhythm of the planet united as one: the distant rise and fall of EMS sirens, geese cutting across the sky, crows calling from the trees. A spring chorus, steady and unhurried. Last week I added an Italian coffee pot representing Nature to the backside of my September 13, 2021 painting Broken Tree. A second coffee pot—this one representing Faith—found its place on the backside of Flower Power. The Resurrection, an idea born in 2025 through the Birds of a Feather project, carries the colours of spring and the soft curve of a feminine form. A small reminder that faith, democracy, and nature can share the same gentleness—and the same resilience—as a good, strong coffee. A woman I’d never met helped me get the first painting started. A simple gesture, but it shaped the week: calm, communal, and grounded in the Legislature’s open air. Easter painting felt like a long exhale of winter, clearing space for spring. Enjoy!
The Legislature Has No Dome, Unity began on an easel in a light drizzle of rain from the heavens on 15 April 2019, behind Herman Poulin’s Service Through Christ statue — right stage of the Alberta Legislature front steps, below the Lieutenant Governor’s flag and beside the reflection pool — on the same day the world watched the Notre‑Dame Cathedral burn. Dozens of passersby, young and old, on the Alberta Legislature grounds were invited to add a renewal of flowers along the base of the painting, turning the work into a small act of shared civic ritual. I completed it in 2021, during COVID‑19, carrying the story of renewal forward. The Grande Stage Democracy was painted on the backside.