Art is Freedom
2000, 2013, 2015, and 2025, Nine Afghan Boys Gathering Firewood.
Inspired by Canada's US War of September 11, 2001, Retribution,
and Singer Songwriter Bruce Cockburn's Rocket Launcher.
XLife, Cartoons, Cut Ups, Continued...
XLife, Trust in your heArt
71, Outdated, 30% Off
I’m Doug Brinkman — based in Edmonton, my artworks lives in the space where public life, storms, symbols, and democracy collide. For nearly two decades I’ve carried a camera, a sketchbook, and a stubborn belief that ordinary citizens can document the world as honestly as any newsroom. The sample artworks on this site come from that same practice: art shaped by events, contradictions, and the restless weather of our shared world.
The Grande Stage Democracy: This painting asks viewers to question the boundaries placed around artistic expression and citizen‑driven free press in Canada. It reflects on why creative and journalistic voices sometimes face restriction within a democratic society. The composition places two well‑known figures within parallel storms—each confronting a distinct moment of political and social upheaval—inviting the viewer to consider how eras of turbulence influence leadership and art.
On the left, George W. Bush stands as the painter‑president, surrounded by the melting steel and fires of war that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. His storm is one of geopolitical shockwaves, military decisions, and the long shadow cast across global politics.
On the right, Jason Kenney faces a different kind of crisis: a world gripped by a global pandemic and the cascading collapse of oil prices in Alberta and abroad. His storm is viral, economic, and deeply local—an upheaval that reshaped the province’s political and social landscape.
Together, the two figures form a study in leadership under pressure, painted into a single unsettled sky.
The terror attacks of 2001 and the pandemic nineteen years later become twin markers of instability—two moments when the world shifted, and when Alberta felt the shock through falling oil prices, political strain, and public uncertainty. This work stands as both a parallel and a provocation: How do leaders navigate storms they cannot control? And why, in a democracy, is the citizen artist still told where they may or may not stand?
"When I first looked at it, it reminded me of Notre Dame Cathedral burning. It also reminds me of some of Van Gogh’s paintings. If we are burning now, like Notre Dame, we will rise better and stronger." - Marg McCuaig-Boyd, Twitter, 2020.
Fire, Rain, Circle, Square (2016)
Acrylic on canvas — From the Fire & Rain Social Art Project (25 outdoor paintings created during the year of the Fort McMurray wildfire) Art is Freedom
Fire & Rain Project
In 2016, Alberta was split between burning and flooding — wildfire smoke one week, torrential rain the next. I painted Fire, Rain, Circle, Square along the North Saskatchewan River during that volatile season, working outdoors as part of my Fire & Rain Social Art Project. That year I completed 160 street shows across Edmonton’s “public” squares, only to learn later that most of those spaces — City Hall, the Legislature grounds, and many plazas — were not truly public at all. That tension between public life and government‑controlled space became part of the work, and still shapes my practice today. (Below) Four Flags🍁US, of July.
July, 2016: While painting along the rising North Saskatchewan River, an Indigenous vagabond named Chief No Tribe joined me. He watched as I worked the textured square — a skull submerged in oil sands. He spoke about circles: the woman’s womb, the stars, the sun, the moon, the atom, the planet. He reminded me that land and water follow circular laws, not the straight lines and squares we impose on maps. His teaching stayed with me for a decade and later inspired my More Circles Than Squares Social Art Project. The painting carries those teachings: Circle — natural cycles, Indigenous knowledge, the shape of life. Square — human boundaries, ownership lines, the illusion of control. Fire — the force that reshapes land. Rain — the force that heals, floods, and erases.
The textured square at the centre holds the storm: tangled roots, scorched earth, the memory of smoke. The skull inside isn’t about death — it’s about witness, perhaps even a warning of irreversible extinction. It’s a reminder that everything living leaves a trace of its moment in time. Around that square, the field shifts from heat‑orange to cool‑turquoise, echoing the wild swings in Alberta’s weather that year — the atmosphere we all breathe whether we choose to or not. This painting marks the moment where my Citizen Free Press practice and my painting practice fused: documenting the world as it was then, and as it feels now. The Painter, XLife Continued...
Birds of a Feather
Democracy, Nature, and Faith
 | ||||
