Birds of Feather art project
Faith🌹Democracy🌹Nature
Last week I bought my a ukulele at the AGA, to commemorate the twenty‑five‑year journey of my painting, 9 Afghan Boys Gathering Firewood (2000–2025). That piece began as an oil portrait of Bruce Cockburn playing a uke beside Lake Louise, and over time it transformed into an abstract memorial for the nine boys killed in Afghanistan by allied forces in 2011. The ukulele feels like a small, personal tribute to that evolution. I hope to learn to play it during future outdoor art shows — if my mind, body and soul allows for it. Next year’s painting season, Left Stage, Exit Right, Free From ARTifice, will officially run from the Spring Solstice until the last Sunday in September. 
Art is Freedom
Doug Brinkman on X
Point of Order, Disorder
LISTEN Label Wear—formerly known as 2019–2021 Speakers Banned Speech and Wear—began as one part of my Freedom to Express and Listen art project, one of 13 social art projects since 2013. It drew inspiration from Virgil Abloh’s Figures of Speech at the MCA Chicago. The project took shape after I created cartoon versions of Premiers Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney locked in a boxing‑glove tug‑of‑war over building pipelines, with the words Alberta United, A Nation Divided, followed by Fair, Efficient, Open and Competitive, printed on a T‑shirt followed with my website address and worn in the public gallery during the 29th Legislature. It didn’t last long during the 30th Legislature, after a reporter in the press gallery complained, the T‑shirt caused a distraction in the assembly and was permanently banned from being worn inside all Alberta Government buildings.











When the ban was lifted in 2021, the label evolved into LISTEN, and Speaker Nathan Cooper introduced me to the Assembly as a friend of the Legislature—my second such introduction, the first delivered by Speaker Robert Wanner, who presented me as Citizen Free News. Premier Jason Kenney once remarked at a town hall that I spend more time in the Legislature than all the corporate media combined. The press gallery sits empty 99% of the time, with the exception of budget day and the Speech from the Throne, while citizens like me are restricted to the public galleries—watching, documenting, and listening. My attendance record began after the Alberta Government objected to my citizen practice of free press. They attempted to ban me three times in 2016 for painting and exhibiting my artworks on the Legislature grounds—pieces depicting the wildfires and floods affecting Alberta as climate change intensified. I continue to practice a citizen’s free press from the galleries, sharing my work through art shows, performance pieces, public interventions, private gatherings, and social media platforms. It is journalism through art. Once, I asked Premier Kenney to rate the corporate news media on a scale of 1 to 10. He gave them a 2, citing their lack of attention to equalization issues between Ottawa and Alberta. Through it all, LISTEN remains the message: democracy isn’t only something we vote for—it’s something we show up for and participate in with all availible tools in hand, and free press by citizens is part of that toolbox Free to Express and LISTEN...
XLife
2017, Not a Bystander Art Project
Jodie Smiles after all that...