Marshall Noice’s brightly colored paintings don’t immediately suggest a strong Ansel Adams influence. But Noice, a Kalispell painter, traces his love of interpreting landscapes through art back to the summer of 1978 when he trained under Adams, the legendary black-and-white nature photographer.
Noice was a fledgling fine arts photographer when he traveled to Carmel, Calif., to train at Adams’ summer-long workshop. Noice was employed as a workshop assistant, performing tasks to help the program run smoothly each day. But he also took lots of photographs and soaked in Adams’ critiques.
“We’d be sitting in Ansel’s living room, with him looking at my photos and trying to say something nice about them,” Noice recalls.
For a young photographer, the experience left a firm impression. But of all that was learned that summer, perhaps what most influenced the rest of Noice’s artistic career was his formal introduction to artistic landscapes. Since then, much of Noice’s life has been dedicated to translating three-dimensional landscapes into two-dimensional art forms, whether photographs or paintings.
“I honestly think I learned more about the landscape as subject matter for an art form from (Adams) than anybody else,” Noice said. “It was wonderful.”
Noice was born in Grand Forks, N.D., in 1952. In 1968, he moved to Kalispell with his family and graduated from Flathead High School. Like many young folks in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he then picked up an instrument and took to the road. But the appeal of trying to make it as a rock and roll star faded.
“Once I had consumed every drop of truck stop coffee and stayed in every Holiday Inn,” Noice said, “I knew I had had enough of that life.”
Back in Montana, Noice’s artistic expression found a new outlet other than music: photography. Noice studied photography at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Alberta, at Adams’ workshop and then at the University of Montana. By the time the 1980s rolled around, he was making a living off of photography.
While expanding his photography career, Noice painted in his free time. He shared a studio with artist Terry Nelson in Kalispell. Together, they painted, but for Noice it was just another creative outlet, not a career.
“I simply did it because I wanted to do it,” Noice said.
But by the late 1980s, he was showing his paintings in museums and quietly making a name for himself. It wasn’t until 1996 that he displayed his art in commercial galleries, but at that point his paintings were already in museum exhibits across the nation.
“It wasn’t really a career move, it was just that I had so much work,” Noice said of showing his work publicly.
Within years after getting into commercial galleries, Noice’s stock as a painter had grown to the point where he no longer had time for photography. He had become a full-time painter.
“It became clear that I could make a living painting,” he said. “It happened a lot quicker than I thought it would.”
Noice readily points to specific influences – such as Mark Rothko and Pierre Bonnard – and epiphanies in shaping his painting career. For one, when still working as a photographer, he spent months shooting Blackfeet Indian artifacts that were part of sculptor Bob Scriver’s collection.
Then at an art show in Jackson Hole, Noice encountered the work of painter Theodore Wadell, a former professor at the University of Montana. At that moment, Noice decided to begin painting American Indian artifacts inspired by the style of Waddell.
“It was one of those moments when a door was just opened up to me by looking at his work,” Noice said.
Noice went on to complete hundreds of oil paintings featuring American Indian artifacts. Then he had another epiphany. While painting “winter weasel tails” hanging from an Indian war shirt, the tails took on new life, Noice said. They looked like trees, and so he made them into trees. He has painted landscapes ever since.
“A metamorphosis took place in my mind,” Noice said of the “winter weasel tail” painting. “All of a sudden I visualized a grove of aspen trees, which has kind of become a motif of mine.”
Indeed, many of Noice’s landscapes today feature aspen groves. And his landscapes can be found in galleries across the country, in cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Chicago and Houston, to name a few. Noice, who sells more than 90 percent of his paintings outside of Montana, has been featured in many publications and won numerous awards.
A Noice oil painting or pastel is unmistakable, rooted in landscape realism but brought to life by vibrant color schemes and abstraction. Bright reds, purples and oranges all have their place in Noice’s lively landscapes.
Describing himself as a “40-hour-a-week painter,” Noice paints out of his studio and gallery on Main Street in Kalispell. Last year, he completed 80 oil paintings and at least twice as many pastels. The oils sell for $1,000-$15,000 apiece and the pastels for $800-$1,500.
With the last of his four kids out of the house, the 58-year-old Noice, who lives in Kalispell with his wife, isn’t slowing down. In fact, he says he’s speeding up.
“I have more ideas than I can accomplish in a given day,” Noice said. “So I’ll have to keep at it.”