My work continues — quieter now, more deliberate — but every bit as committed to the belief that democracy grows stronger when citizens participate with open an mind, and a willingness to meet each other in public like by this ice rink.
Skaters on Ice, Listen...
Democracys' Abstracts of Light and Shadows
This is my ongoing legacy of one citizen who never stopped practicing free press since my high school days — long before smartphones, long before social media, long before anyone thought a teenager with a sketchbook could grow into a seventy‑year‑old still carrying the same spark. What began as a youthful instinct to inform my community has become a lifelong practice of drawing, painting, cartooning, listening, and showing up wherever democracy struggles to breathe. For years, I stood outside the Alberta Legislature with placards — not to protest, but to share news like a modern town crier. My creative, colourful picket signs did the job advertisers would be proud of. One day, a Sheriff warned me that my town crier shouts would be seen as criminal mischief in his mind. Of course art is subjective, so his cue evolved to where I no longer picket my stories. Now I carry symbols — small tokens marking nineteen years of Civil Informing: Democracy Day and Black History month outside Edmonton City Hall, as my public thanks to those who strengthen democratic tools like Alberta’s Recall Act. My work has shifted from sidewalk to the sketchbook and paintbrush. Today, you’ll find me practicing free press in the open — in the fresh air with art shows, and inside places of faith, public government spaces, and The Art Gallery of Alberta. I create political cartoons, paintings, and share stories word-of-mouth that invite conversation. I show up where dialogue still has a pulse, where people still pause long enough to talk, where democracy feels like something we build together. This is my practice of free press as a lifelong art form: gentle, persistent, creative, and grounded in kindness.
Art is Freedom XLife
“For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face.” This was Paul’s poetic way of saying
that our understanding, in this life, is partial and dim— like looking at a reflection in a flawed or distorted glass mirror
Edmonton City Hall, Not so Open and Transparent.
The public view is distorted while they can see us.
Photo: Doug Brinkman for Bear Whistle News
 | ||||
