The man sits alone at the water’s edge, on a pier, at the bottom of Sixth street in Astoria – anywhere along the waterfront in that river town he so loves.

Perhaps he is scoping the horizon for a foreign ship, one bearing the flag of Korea, China or Chile. The man’s eyes are keen. He watches the subtle gradations of light – how that light shapes the hue of the water, a pale winter sky, storm and clouds, mostly soft gray today but streaked with rare strokes of turquoise. He watches how the sunlight – when it dances through those same clouds – impacts the rusty bow of that freighter, then how it dances away like so much wanderlust.

Later, he might pull a pencil and drawing pad from his vest and sketch some part of that unfolding drama. He might paint the scene with a palette of watercolor paints: crimson, ultramarine-blue or Payne’s gray.

He looks for the essential. “I don’t paint everything that’s there. I paint just enough. I don’t want to tell you the whole story.” But he leaves clues and it’s up to us to find them. Perhaps this is the pattern of Noel Thomas’ life. Like that freighter from a distant port, Thomas has ridden calm and angry waters. He has spent a good part of his life looking for clues, clues to who he is and what he wants. Ultimately, much comes down to this: “Joy is holding a pencil and pen.”

How it all startedAsk him about those years blown by. Ask him about growing up in Longview, on the Washington side of the river, and wanting more. He will remember a day when he was nine. Remember the editor of the Longview Daily News giving him the end of a roll of newsprint, and how he drew what he calls, “the whole of World War II” on that rough by-product of Pacific evergreens, and how that process brought happiness.

When his mother, Lucile Davies, ended her marriage with Noel’s father, Ennis, and remarried, the teenage boy was offered a choice. He could remain in Longview or move to Los Angeles, where his step-father had been recalled into the Navy. Even then, something told Thomas that his road lay toward a bigger city, and there he would find his way … for a while.

That path led him to Uncle Sam’s army and a particular boredom. Hadn’t a ninth-grade teacher, a Mrs. B. Johnson, read the tea leaves of his life? Hadn’t she told him to step up, to pursue his talent? “Go to school and be an artist,” she had insisted. Sure, it seemed that everyone could see that the boy could draw, even fellow soldiers. He drew their portraits for $2 each. But years before, while speaking to his favorite teacher, he had asked, “Just where should I go?”

“Well,” Mrs. Johnson answered, taking in the boy’s steady steely-blue eyes, “You should go to the Los Angeles Art Center.” So, one afternoon while lying on a cot in the Army barracks, that particular discussion rushed back into his brain. It rushed in like a freight train with a mission.

Just a year later, Thomas found himself enrolled in that fine institution, enrolled with a double major, illustration and advertising. Thank you, Mrs. B. Johnson. Thank you to every great teacher who shapes a student. Thomas talks about that teacher and other mentors with sincere affection and admiration. The man can flush effusive.

Thomas finished that four-year college course in less than three, and was soon headed for the majors. Around 1960 he landed a position with an advertising company, Doyle, Dane and Burnbach in the Big Apple, driven there by big talent.

Driven to drinkChapters unfurled. Thomas was married, and had a daughter, Robin. He “blew” that marriage, and began to drink hard. He resented the chain of command at the top of the advertising world. New York expected too much from a man! He changed professions, became a director of advertising. Director! That meant he directed personnel, but he wasn’t doing his art.

“I felt in my gut that that I wasn’t sophisticated enough for the town.” Thomas didn’t fit New York expectation. He stepped on a plane and headed back west, closer to home.

Back in Los Angeles he met Patricia Staton. They worked together in the same advertising firm delivering a product neither particularly believed in. “My job,” says Thomas, “was to convince the middle-class that they needed something that they didn’t need.”

Staton was a lovely woman with silky waist-length hair, a lithe figure and intelligent eyes. Thomas and Staton camped in the Sierras, drove a Volkswagen bus into the big tree country and often drank three or four martinis after work, waiting for the traffic to ease up. She was gentle but demanded integrity. Thomas knew he had met his equal. They became inseparable. They were married in 1975.

Years raced by. Robin turned 11. When asked what she wanted for her birthday, the young girl mentioned a doll house. Thomas and Staton went to work. That first doll house led quickly to a new profession. In the next 20 years, that simple doll house evolved into stunning miniatures that spiraled them into a rarefied status with a handful of artists who could claim to be among the best in the world.

And where do world-class artists settle? Well, that port of call happened to be Seaview on the Long Beach Peninsula, Thomas’ childhood getaway, and a mere 70-mile drive from that Weyerhaeuser town of his youth. For the next 20 years, the Thomases sold their product to collectors from the East Coast to Neiman Marcus. The doll houses were exclusive and coveted, but something was missing. Deep in their gut and out of reach, the couple remained unhappy.

When it all changedTheir last miniature house, a bungalow, sold to a rich couple in the Southwest. When the artists delivered their 2 1/2-year project, the love of their life was greeted with total indifference, as if, “We had just delivered a piece of furniture, like a couch.” Somewhere on the long road back to Seaview, the couple had a frank discussion. The conversation went something like this:

“What do you really want to do, Noel?”

“I want to paint. And you, Patty?”

“I’d like to be a poet.”

They shook hands and changed their lives, this time apparently for the last time. Other changes would shape Thomas’ life though, as sure as the unpredictable skies of the Pacific Northwest.

Thomas had developed a drinking problem, but refused to face reality.

Pat put it bluntly one morning at the breakfast table, in their new home in Astoria. Thomas had established himself as a distinguished watercolor painter, Pat as a fine poet. “You’ve got a drinking problem, Noel, and you won’t admit it. I’ve some news for you: it’s me or the bottle.”

Reality settled like a winter sunset. Thomas had to choose between love and poison. Strange that poison can clutch so tenaciously.

Thomas found his epiphany on the first night he went to Alcoholics Anonymous. Here were a band of brothers who talked straight and held the line. And he found something else. Starring one night at a blue Van Gogh sky vibrant with starlight, a revelation struck: “All you have to do is trust in a power higher than yourself.”

To this day he cannot define that force, but so began a new creed. From that day forward, Thomas has never drunk alcohol again.

And how did that decision translate into his life? “Biggest change – certainly sobriety was, and I’m grateful for every day.” And with that, he strolls out of his house at the top of Sixth and into his new world.

A ship from Taiwan is crossing the Columbia River Bar. A merry-go-round of cumulus bridges sea and sky. Thomas scans the landscape for the subject of his next painting. As sure as the turn of tides, ideas sidle into his head, rich and lustrous. His wondrous paintings must stand as testimonials: the man is happy.