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haunted

Haunted; mixed media on cradled wood panel; 20 x 40 (x 1.5) inches; painting surface is birch hardwood mounted to a basswood frame

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Canadians are haunted. It's a fact! Canadians are visited by malevolent spirits more often than any other nation. "It's really not a surprise," reports Dr. Jonathan Howler of the Tuktuyaaqtuuq Institute for Talking Spectres. "Considering that three out of five residents admit to having committed one of the 'big three' Canadian crimes -- murder, manslaughter or fur trafficking -- then you have a lot of guilty, troubled people wandering around. Add to that all the aggrieved spirits -- all the homicide cases that go unsolved -- and you've got a virtual pandemic of ghosts." Dr. Howler's study, entitled Careless Whispers: the Casual Nature of Canadian Lust, Crime and Ghosts, reports that due to the changing nature of Canadian immigration patterns, while the oldest ghosts are almost all of British or French extraction, many of the newer ghosts are Asian in character. "Of course the Germans are still overrepresented," states Dr. Howler, "but they tend to have a lot more to answer for."

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This painting is part of the "O Canada, O New England" show I'm having next Saturday with my friend Susan at artstream studios in Rochester, New Hampshire. I'll be posting more throughout next week.

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