Art is Freedom
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2026‑05‑25, Painter’s Notes: Working on a piece called Faith. May has opened the paint season with far more momentum than I expected. This was supposed to be a quieter year — more drawing, less hauling — yet the canvases keep calling. I’ve already passed 13 painting projects in this 13th social art season, since 2013, each one carried by, bus, train and mostly by foot through the city. At 71, the body still says yes to the work, and I’m grateful for that strength. It’s been a healthy month: steady legs, steady work ethic, while the soul does its usual monkey dance. Some days are bright and clear. Other days the monkey brain swings through the branches, making noise at midnight and kicking up the dust before dawn. That’s the painter’s weather system. As John Prine once said, “there’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown.” I don’t drown. I wade with the river flow, serendipitous, not putting too much stock into a hope, or wish upon a star like this artwork is trying to say.
This is wildfire season and the weather is getting hotter. Ten years ago it was Fort McMurray — 25 paintings, 160 outdoor public art shows, and a province learning the hard language of smoke. Last year the townsite of Jasper burned. This year, knock on wood, most wildfires are contained, and the skies above Edmonton clearer for now. In that steadiness, my work continues. I paint what I witness: the heat, the hope, the democracy of public space, the faith carried by small rituals, the nature that refuses to be quiet. Each canvas is a field note. Each walk with the easel is a reminder that stories don’t stop — they migrate, return, and rise again like morning sunrises over the river valley. That’s where I’m standing next month: brush in hand, eyes open, listening for the next idea for a painting or a sketch to arrive.
XLife
Thank You, Virgil Abloh — 2019 Figures of Speech. Life’s too short for small labels. XL Life — home of my personal ‘LISTEN Label’ fashion wear: inside the gallery, T‑shirts and sports‑jersey cover‑ups; outside, summer caps and toques of Alberta.
On Monday, riding the South Valley Line — my little Prayer Train to Mill Woods — I shared Abloh's story with a beautiful Black Sister carrying a backpack styled with real intention. When I stepped off the train, I met a handsome Black Brother in a trending Louis Vuitton T‑shirt. Wow. I told him how much I loved his shirt — loved it enough to offer my Oilers Jersey .09, FREE PRESS, in trade. He smiled, answered without words, and I knew: no one parts with their Virgil Abloh, Figures of Speech.
