With the start of a new year, new ambitions often come. While many resolutions fail to make it past February, the tradition is longstanding. According to historians, ancient Romans celebrated the start of January by making promises and offerings to Janus, the god of beginnings, transitions, doorways and time. Sometimes, however, resolutions can have enduring results, lasting longer than the year itself. That was the case with Jonathan Noon’s New Year’s resolution for 2020: draw everyday. At 35-years-old, with no art education since high school and at a turning point in his career, he embarked on this challenge to explore what had been a childhood interest. Growing up in San Diego, Noon had very little exposure to fine art. “There’s no art scene there,” he said. “Even today, there are very few galleries and museums. It wasn’t a good place for an artist to be raised. We didn’t think of it like that.” As a kid, Noon had an obsession with capturing what was around him, mimicking what he was seeing. He enjoyed drawing in school, but it never went far beyond that. “That’s sort of the extent of it,” he said “When I was a kid, I did do drawing lessons one time with this very old man at a McDonald’s. That was really cool.” As a concept, being a career artist did not occur to Noon. “If somebody had said, ‘Whoa, look what you can do with oil paint. Do you know what oil paintings sell for?’ Even then, I would have been like, ‘Okay, but that’s like getting into the NBA or something,’” he said. “That’s so obscure and so remote that I wouldn’t have even dared to do it then.” After high school, Noon decided to study business at the University of San Diego. Soon after, he directed his focus to finance specifically. In 2012, after a few years in the field, Noon stepped away to return to college for a Master of Science in exercise physiology. “I didn’t love finance,” he said. “It was okay. I liked my employer and whatnot. I wasn’t miserable, but I wanted a change.” By this point, Noon had a growing fascination with triathlon and regularly competed. After graduating with his master’s from Baylor University, he worked as a private athletic trainer and committed to his own full-time triathlete training. In November 2019, Noon retired from the sport and was working on plans to open up his own training facility in Boulder, Colorado, but not without apprehension. “I was going to do it, but I was a little nervous about it,” he said. “This is uncertain, and even if it does work out, it’s not a lot of money. I was kind of going out on a limb.” In March of 2020, while still working out the finer details of his plan, COVID-19 shutdowns struck, putting a pause on opening a training facility. At this same time, however, he became more and more drawn into his New Year’s resolution. With the extra time and ambiguity surrounding the future of his plan, his art interest began to expand beyond just drawing. “I took one online workshop for oil painting, and the painting was successful enough to where I was like, ‘Okay, we should just learn properly,’” he said. “I was 35 and just starting to learn to craft. So it’s like there’s no time to waste here. Let’s just learn properly.” Just two months later, Noon moved to Boston to attend the Atelier program at the Academy of Realist Art, finishing the curriculum in 10 weeks. “Even when I was done with the Atelier, I didn’t know what it was going to look like,” he said. “I figured it was going to be the regular gallery route where you supply galleries and you try to get into bigger galleries and whatnot. After his time in Boston, he moved to Colorado. Initially unsure of the direction he wanted to take his art, he began exploring the themes of Western art. “I started painting it just because they’re the most American stories,” he said. “It’s like the most American thing out there. I just gravitated to it.” Now living in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his wife, Katie, and his two kids, Noon sources inspiration from other painters, Western films and the vast southwest landscapes that surround him. After coming up with his ideas and finding requisite reference photographs, he uses Adobe Photoshop to experiment with different aspects of the art before starting on canvas. With two young kids, Noon seeks to make the most out of time in the studio. While he focuses on one piece at a time, he likes to have a queue of other works lined up. “I usually have several started, but I’ll just finish one,” he said. “Then I’ll get going on the next one. I don’t like finishing a painting and having no idea what I’m going to do next.” Now, just over six years since his New Year’s resolution, Noon continues to explore the world of art, portraying western themes with new angles and is looking into exploring new subject matter. “If you’re born with one skill that’s obvious, it’s a spit in the face to just ignore that for years and years, which I did,” he said. “I just didn’t do anything, and it bothered me. It nagged at me.” Profile by Griffin Salkowski