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.
Rosehip, White Rose 2024-2025, It began quietly, with an easel beside wild roses, cut back last fall on Legislature grounds. Nineteen painters joined in— young and old, each brushstroke a story, each colour a conversation. Two Punjabi ladies in a field of rosé blooms, watched by a playful figure, flanked by signs and trees a surreal landscape of a constructive protection.
Opera of Roses
by Three Painters
Painter’s Notes: 2015, Oils The Judge (The Honourable Murray Sinclair) and the Poet, We First Nations, Métis and Inuit. Gifted to the Poet, Elizabeth Potskin.
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, as Canadians, all treaty people.
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.