Welcome to the website of artist Will Noble. His painting style of intimate ultra-realism is done totally freehand (no projections, no tracings). In his watercolor and oil paintings, he explores cascades, creeks, tide pools, reeds, rocks, and light reflections on water.

The level of detail is impossible to see on the scale of the website, so if you are in the Bay Area, please make an appointment to visit Will's studio in San Rafael, California, to see his work as it was meant to be seen.

His subjects are the scenic lakes, waterfalls, and creeks of Marin County, California, snow-melt cascades and creeks in the Sierra Nevada, and of the Oregon coast.
 

His animation, Mimi Ni, many years in the making is now available for viewing on YouTube.
 

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“Life isn’t painted in solid swipes of all one color, like a fence. It’s... pixelated...made out of countless dots of moments -- some ecstatic, some heartbreaking. And joy and sadness oscillate, breath by breath.” -- Anne Cushman, The Mama Sutra

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"I’ve always loved Will’s work but could never quite understand all of those tiny circles. Was it an abstraction? A technique? Whatever it was I liked the way it looked.  
" Then one day while on a hike, I paused on a footbridge to watch the water flowing below. As I focused my attention on the surface of the water, studying the flow, the light, the color, and constant change, I started seeing...circles! 
" At once I understood that Will’s interest and commitment to seeing deeply is reflected in those tiny circles. Now I can’t watch a stream without seeing his beautiful paintings. And, of course, circles."     – Mary Wagstaff, artist

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