NORWAY — Local artist Duncan Slade is offering a unique show of work called “Nostalgia “at Café Nomad this September. The show collects work from the many decades of the 91-year-old artist’s career. It includes images from South Paris, Portland, Lewiston and Norway, and several portraits of students along the way.

Slade grew up in Chicago and served as a pilot in the Marine Corps during World War II. After the war, he spent 25 years working at UniRoyal as a manager of product design and then the direction of his life turned toward art. He earned a graduate degree in art education, took an early retirement, and, at 51, began a second career in teaching and painting.

Slade came to the Oxford Hills in 1974 to teach at Oxford Hills junior high school and was nominated in 1983 for Maine Teacher of the Year. He returned to school for a second master’s degree in expressive arts therapy.

“Wherever I am, that’s what I paint,” he says in the notes of the 2009 calendar “A Year in a Small Town: Duncan Slade Paints Norway, Maine,” produced and sold to support Norway Downtown. Copies of the calendar are still available at Books N Things and the Town Office.

“Showing this work in Café Nomad helps me process my past,” said Slade. He continues to make art at his Studio 227 on Main Street, next-door to Café Nomad. On most days, you can see him there, chatting with a visitor or two, sipping coffee and enjoying a muffin, still painting after all these years.