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Artist Feels At Home With Lake Mural

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

Marion Noel enjoys painting with oils on slate, which have been used as welcome signs on homes.

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By MARC VALERO

Highlands Today

Published: January 12, 2009

SEBRING - Marion Noel has Lake Jackson in her living room.

No, you can't actually step into the lake from her living room, but it sure seems like you could.

The artist painted a mural of Sebring's largest lake on one entire living room wall in her double-wide manufactured home.

As a reference to paint by, Noel took photos of the lake from the viewpoint of Ryant Boulevard where it enters U.S. 27, which is the view she sees when driving from her subdivision onto the highway.

It's a beautiful lake, Noel said.

"Always when it's calm, it reminds be of blue milk," she said. "I told my husband 'one of these days I'm going to take pictures and I'm going to paint that.'"

Noel said her husband, who passed away six years ago, replied, "Not on the wall again, every time we move we lose it."

But, it's the best surface for something that big, Noel believes.

Noel is a year-round Sebring resident now, but she created the mural during two winters in Sebring when she still lived near Harmony, Pa. during the summers. She completed the painting in 2001.

When the Noels were living in Pennsylvania, Marion Noel had painted a farm scene, with a winding road, a barn and a large dead tree on a wall in their home.

"It wasn't a local view like this is," she said. "This lake just seemed to speak to me."

The Lake Jackson mural features an overturned rowboat in the foreground and landmark structures across the lake in the background like the Fountainhead, Palms of Sebring, Sebring Library and Kenilworth Lodge.

She also took the liberty to add a few large palm trees in the foreground on the mural's sides.

Her grandson wanted her to put an alligator in the foreground, but Noel told him she couldn't get down that low to paint.

"But, I painted the boat in upside down; I could do that," she said.

As a hobby and also for a small fee, Noel paints cats and birds and other animals on old slate roofing pieces she got in Pennsylvania when a 100-year old building was torn down.

The old roofing pieces are used as welcome signs on homes, and sometime she paints a picture of the homeowner's home on the slate.

"I don't charge much; it's more or less a labor of love," noel said.

She also paints landscapes and seascapes on canvas.

Noel's high school art teacher told her she wasn't good enough to do oil paintings so she was relegated to drawing figures in ink.

"I was so disappointed," Noel said. "I should have taken some of these and gone back to her and said 'see what you missed.'"

Her next project will be a seascape painting for her brother, featuring a lighthouse.

She is waiting to hear which lighthouse he wants depicted in the painting.

"Then I will probably bring it up on the Internet and see what it looks like and go from there," she said.

Highlands Today reporter Marc Valero can be reached at 386-5826 or mvalero@highlandstoday.com

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