When people heard about the fire at the Westminster Hotel, a lot of them reached out to ask about the paintings.
It's true that I lost a number of pieces in the fire. Murals I'd painted directly onto the walls. Other paintings that had been hanging in the building for years. But the more I've thought about it, the harder it is to separate my work from everything else that made The Pit what it was.
The Westminster wasn't just a building with art on the walls.
It was a place that collected pieces of people.
Long before I ever painted there, others had left their mark. Fabian's portraits hung in the building for years. Owners added things. Patrons added things. Stories accumulated. Objects accumulated. Every generation seemed to leave something behind for the next one.
That's how old northern buildings work.
Nobody sits down and decides to create a museum. It just happens. One thing gets added, then another. Before long, a place begins carrying its own history.
Over the years, I became one of the people contributing to that history. I painted murals directly onto the walls and added other works throughout the building. I even painted the Westminster itself more than a few times. Like many people in Dawson, I found myself drawn to the old place and its character.
The funny thing is that none of those pieces were ever really mine once they went up.
They became part of the building.
People sat beneath them having a beer after work. They celebrated birthdays beneath them. They argued beneath them. They met old friends and made new ones beneath them. The paintings simply became part of the backdrop of life in Dawson.
The loss of the artwork is unfortunate, but what strikes me most is the loss of all those layers of history that had gathered in one place over the years. The Pit wasn't valuable because of any single painting, portrait, photograph, or object. It was valuable because all of those things existed together.
The building was carrying a little piece of everyone who had passed through it.
Fires can take buildings. They can take paintings. They can take objects that seemed permanent.
What they can't take are the stories.
Anyone who spent time in The Pit still carries those with them.
And maybe that's where the real history of a place lives anyway.
