Trouble makers, the coming storms
1979, Between Friends, Oils,
Montana, Alberta Foothills🍁US
The 2025 Birds of a Feather Art Project—begun during Black History Month—is my personal tribute to Virgil Abloh, Chicago’s visionary fashion designer, and Dennis Edney, Edmonton’s fearless freedom fighter. This social art project reflects on the cliques, clubs, and structures that shape both belonging and exclusion. Since 2013, I have completed 12 social art projects confronting war, anger, violence, bullying, and environmental issues. Not A Bystander (2017) challenged me to recognize my own place in cycles of harm. The 2024 Rosehip Art Project: Source of Vitamin C, Seed of Love sought solutions to my anger and the poetic resilience from the rosehip to the white rose. My work does not resist the current—it moves with the flow. I document, sketch, and paint the world as it unfolds—shaping each piece alongside my community, engaging in conversation with the forces that define our time. 
Art Is Freedom, Free Press
Quick-Drawn Conclusions, on X
Together, backside of Point of Order 
The Grande Stage Democracy
The Legislature has no dome,Unity
2025, Birds of a Feather art project
Roses and XL Coffee for Dangerous Times
Freedom to Express and Listen
The Painter, Rare White Bird Gallery
Art is not confined to galleries or bound by rigid interpretation—it moves through streets, public squares, and conversations, finding its audience in the flow of everyday life. It does not judge or take sides but stands as a mirror, reflecting the world in ways only the observer can define. Fate and serendipity weave themselves into the fabric of creation, guiding the brush, shaping the journey, and revealing truths long before they are spoken. To create is not to control but to trust the current, to let the unseen unfold, and to embrace the mystery of what lies just beyond the next bend.
In the summer of 2021, I completed the final piece in a series of four paintings at Violet King Henry Plaza, Legislature grounds. These works were created on canvases salvaged from a dumpster during the COVID-19 pandemic, breathing new life into discarded materials, a collaboration between the painter and the community of invited painters. The painting, titled In China, Life Is Like a River, was inspired by Ken Ku Kuo, a former colleague from Hanoi, Vietnam. Back in 1981, while working together in the Edmonton Sun newspaper pressroom, he described the ever-changing nature of a river back in China—its waters shifting unpredictably. Sometimes, the current rushes forward like rapids, turbulent and marked by struggle. Other times, it flows gently, bringing peace and joy. Yet, through all its changes, the river never ceases, adapting, and forever enduring. 
Outsider, Community Art Show, Point of Order, add a little ice cream, my just reward. A young woman, lingering with a tattooed crowd in downtown Edmonton near the library, complimented my artwork. After finishing my rapidly melting ice cream in the 24°C heat, I walked over to her gang to show the backside, titled Disorder. Suddenly, a young man lunged at me. "Get the f*** away from here!" he snapped. Before I could react, the group's matriarch—Mama Tattoo—spoke up. "I like your painting," she said, her voice steady. The young man’s demeanor shifted. He looked at the artwork again, his expression softening. "That's an amazing piece of art," he admitted. "You're a super talent!"
9 Afghan Boys Gathering Firewood" is a painting that has lived many lives. It started in 2000-2001 as an image of Bruce Cockburn playing guitar in the mountains of Lake Louise, a serene and reflective moment. But over time, the meaning of the piece changed as my understanding of war and its consequences deepened. In 2013, I altered it—replacing the guitar with a rocket launcher outside the gates of the Edmonton Folk Festival, protesting Cockburn’s call for continued military intervention in Afghanistan. It was a direct response to the harsh realities of war, where women and children—like in his song—were being killed by our allied bombs and bullets.Then in 2015, the painting transformed again. It became a tribute to nine Afghan boys who lost their lives in 2011, mistaken as the enemy while simply gathering firewood. Their story needed to be told, their memory honored. This painting holds layers of history, protest, and remembrance. Each brushstroke carries the weight of conflict, loss, and resilience. It stands as a dialogue—challenging the way we think about war, who it affects, and the voices that are too often silenced.
Last of the Alberta Caribou, XLife

In strokes of colour, bold and wide, A life unfolds, unbound by tide. With brush in hand and heart sincere, each doubt embraced, each path made clear. A canvas shared, a voice untamed, Through fire and flood, through love reclaimed. Walls once raised now fade from sight, replaced by kindness, soft yet bright. The skeptics watch, the critics stare, Yet art persists—it does not care. For in each stroke, in every hue, The world unites in something true. Not for sale, nor lost to trade, but stitched in the hands of those who stayed. To paint, to build, to freely be, A feathered flock—through unity. And when they ask, "How are you, friend?" The answer echoes without end. Not loudly sung, nor forcefully, but spoken— Bravely. Rightly. Freely.
No New Normal painted by 7 painters, inside Violet King Henry Plaza
Hineni, I am here, Gifted to artist Hanny Al Khoury: La La Lands
Worshipers of Jesus Christ, Hare Krishna and Edmonton Oilers