XLife
Birds of a Feather Art Project
2026, Maria's Beautiful Trouble Makers
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Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Love — A Life in Practice
I have spent my life in the service of stories — drawing them, printing them, painting them, and carrying them into public space. My first newsroom was a high‑school cafeteria in Toronto, where I edited Out to Lunch and learned that a single sentence, honestly written, can shift the air in a room. Ontario later recognized me as a Graphic Arts Craftsman, a trade I carried west to Edmonton in 1979 — the same year the Oilers joined the NHL and the city felt like a frontier of possibility. For 42 years I worked inside the newspaper industry, and in my spare time I practiced what I’ve always believed democracy requires: a free press that belongs to the people who live under it. I joined activists, gathered signatures, and helped carry two petitions on the events of September 11, 2001 all the way to the House of Commons. Elizabeth May and the NDP read our questions into the record. The government’s answer was no — no inquiry, no tax dollars spent on what they called conspiracy theories — even as Canada joined the American wars of retribution already underway. 911 Truth, William Burroughs Khadr Cut
2000-2025, Fire, and Rain
In 2013, when the Edmonton Journal’s Eastgate plant closed, so did that chapter of my newspaper printing. But the stories didn’t stop. It simply changed mediums. Over the next decade I poured myself into thirteen social art projects — political, environmental, human‑rights, civil‑rights — each one an act of free press by other means. Canvas became my column. Public space became my newsroom. The people passing by became my readership. Now, at 71, I still practice free press in an Alberta democracy that feels increasingly strained by heat, war, and the ticking of the doomsday clock. My daily prayer is simple: Faith. Do Good. Be Humble. These words steady me as I continue down the river of life, trusting serendipity to carry me where I’m needed. Birds of a Feather, now in its second year, is my sanctuary — a place where Observation and Listening replaces outrage, where mythic documentation replaces noise, and where the theme Left Stage, Exit Right, Free From Artifice reminds me that truth doesn’t need a spotlight. It only needs someone willing to witness it. My name is Doug Brinkman. I am still here. I am still painting... 2020-2026, Skaters, and Shadows.
