NORWAY – The colorful and textural multimedia art of Heather Westleigh will be on exhibit throughout the month in the Community Gallery at Café Nomad.

“Our vision has always been to provide our community with a place to eat, relax, socialize, work and most importantly be inspired,” said café owner Scott Berk.

Westleigh, who creates her art under the alias Zoe Newton, is also a Western Maine Art Group member. She creates art with oil, sculpie (clay), plaster, wax, acrylic and almost any medium she can get her hands on. She likes to explore color, depth and texture.

Most recently, she discovered encaustic painting, an ancient medium that has been recently revived. With this colored wax medium Westleigh combines her academic, social and artistic interests to develop what she calls “altered pages.” Using primarily old romance novels, she has begun to explore both the liberation and continued oppression that this often-overlooked literary genre offers to both women and men.

“The result has taken me beyond the individual experience to question the impact on Western culture at large. The journey has taken me away from representation in to the abstract – a shift that has been both tantalizing and challenging,” Westleigh said.

Westleigh has studied art locally with Pat Chandler and Arla Patch and recently earned a bachelor of arts degree from Goddard College in Vermont. Her work is regularly exhibited by the Western Maine Art Group at the Matolcsy Arts Center in Norway, the McLaughlin Garden in South Paris and other locations, including in the annual Norway Sidewalk Art Show. Her work has also been shown in Vermont and in New York.

An educator at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School, Westleigh lives in Bridgton with her partner and two sons. Besides creating art, she also offers classes to children and adults, and does commissioned work.