The now former artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Veterinary College has quit his position, saying the Charlottetown institution was trying to censor one of his paintings.
Christopher Griffin, who relocated from Ottawa to Prince Edward Island in 2023, became the regional college’s first-ever artist-in-residence last November. The unpaid position gave him the opportunity to brighten up some of the UPEI-based college’s community spaces.
He spruced up the students’ Polar Bear Lounge with a new mural and created about three or four pieces a week for nearly six months, hanging many of them on the college’s walls. Most featured animals, a recurring theme in his work.
But Griffin said the focus of his work began to change after Jan. 20, when Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president for the second time.
The Republican politician has since launched a trade war against numerous countries, including Canada, and has continually mused about annexing this country as the “51st state.”
“When my country was threatened by the government of the United States of America… I felt like I had to do something. I had to react,” Griffin told CBC News on Wednesday.
“My role as an artist is to communicate, so I came up with the concept of creating a body of work based on our national anthem.”
One of the paintings in Griffin’s series, called O Canada and depicting an elephant standing under a tiny Canadian flag, hung at the AVC for two months without any concerns.
The complaints came with the hanging of a painting called The Crossing, showing a boat full of lemmings carrying a crumpled and discoloured U.S. flag across an icy northern Canadian waterway.
It’s a take on the famous 1851 work Washington Crossing the Delaware by German-American artist Emanuel Leutze, depicting General George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River with the Continental Army in 1776 during the American Revolutionary War.
“I realized, once I put the American flag in, that there would be some commentary, which I welcomed. For me, this was not an anti-American painting, and I took great pains to not make it so,” Griffin said. “I chose lemmings because they have the mythology of producing mass suicide by jumping over a cliff or jumping into water.
“It seemed to me that the government of the United States was self-inflicting wounds, so to me it seemed like a very straightforward metaphor.”
College officials said they received three complaints about The Crossing, two of them from American faculty members. About a third of the vet college’s staff and students are from the United States.
The AVC’s dean, Dominique Griffon, said the artist-in-residence program was envisioned as a way to offer students and staff a serene space, given the daily stresses of learning and practising veterinary medicine. She said Griffin’s work initially fit that vision perfectly.
“Unbeknownst to me… a few months ago, Chris changed the focus of his work toward more politically charged work,” Griffon said. “We’re not disputing the value in engaging in this difficult conversation; it’s just that the veterinary school is not the best venue for that debate.”
The dean said the college wanted him to continue displaying most of his paintings, to which he retained ownership rights, but to keep the more controversial ones elsewhere.
So Griffin was asked to remove The Crossing — immediately, according to a statement he posted on Facebook. He refused.
Griffon said it was the artist’s decision to instead leave the residency.
Some students and faculty turned to social media to express disappointment with the administration asking Griffin to remove the artwork. A thank-you card at the college signed by students and staff includes messages of support for the artist.
For now, his paintings will stay in his downtown Charlottetown art gallery, from which he regularly runs online auctions of his work to benefit food banks and other charities. He said he is confident the work he did at the vet college will find a new home soon.
As for the AVC, Griffin says he doesn’t wish any ill will on either the university or its administration. But he doesn’t believe his art contributed to an unsafe learning environment.
“It’s not a primary school, it’s a university,” he said. “If a painting of lemmings in a boat causes them to feel unsafe, they’re going to have a tough time.”
