Salon des Refusés

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Ghost Town near Lake Minnewanka

Ghost Town near Banff

Watercolour+crayon

@2005 Charlene Brown

I’ve been sending paintings to an international juried competition Painting on the Edge since 2005 and have been rejected every year. I have taken a proactive approach to all this rejection and now think of this body of work as my own personal Salon des Refusés, with ‘Ghost Town near Lake Minnewanka’ as the founding piece.

The town was Bankhead, a coal mining town that flourished at the turn of the twentieth century, but where little but some foundations and the steps up to the Catholic church remains. When the mine closed in the 1920s, most of the people and several buildings were moved into nearby Banff.