I wasn't really thinking about having a new show, but I was playing wIth colours and they kept pushing me towards encaustic. This piece I'm working on uses scraps of coloured paper and cardbord and paper that I've coloured myself. The various pieces are not glued down.

As you can see, I'm colouring it further with a wide variety of crayons, markers, pens, pencils and pastels. ​I like some of the effects of the colours beside each other. It's a bit of an entrance into some form. Once I go that far I just play with it until the image tells me it's finished and it's good.

I was driving along Highway 2 into my hometown of Brockville last Friday night. I was looking at the river and realized the enormous influence it has had on my imagination. Water appears in many, many of my images.

I saw water from my bedroom window, also simply walking around the town, and from boats such as canoes, rowboats, sailboats and the ferry crossing the river.

When I was born I was brought back to a place within a few yards of the river. I've lived near water ever since then: during the summer at cottages, around the lakes of eastern Ontario, in Toronto where I live now along Lake Ontario.

I'm sure if I had grown up on the Prairies, that would always be reflected in any of my work, instead of the water, which is now so important in my work.

When I broke my leg two years ago, I had to walk carefully, especially outside. I had to look down at the sidewalk, and there were a host of fascinating little twigs and bits of this and that. I started picking them up. Next thing I knew, they were starting to appear in my work.

These are the beginning of order and I hope aesthetic appeal to some of these little bits and pieces from the road.  A first layout that is not glued.

This second one is closer to completion. This is 12 by 12 inches on masonite, starting with a white ground, to which the twigs are glued with encaustic medium, and the encaustic medium does allow the introduction of colour, which is still to be applied.

The twigs have become a graphic element.

Happy Easter and welcome to my new blog, NorMal Life!

Yesterday I had a chance to do a full-day workshop with Victoria Wallace at Lucsculpture School & Studies Art Gallery (663 Greenwood Avenue in Toronto). Today, when I add this the new work, I see I already have more than a dozen encaustics in progress for my next exhibit.

Here they are, all lined up in my working space.

The show I'm working towards will take place at Gerrard Art Space (1475 Gerrard Street East in Toronto) this coming September 28 to October 16.