Takoma Park Artist Leaves a Legacy of Passionate Kindness

By Eric Bond

Years of training and athletic instinct come together in a microsecond as the striker accepts a pass from her teammate and spots an opening between defenders. The stadium reverberates with energy as she swings her leg with focused power under the ball to send it sailing out of the grasp of the keeper—into the net.

This decisive moment was captured graphically by Takoma Park illustrator Noah Macmillan, and it is being widely distributed on a self-adhesive pieces of paper, about an inch by an inch-and-a-half. You can get a copy of Noah’s work by visiting the Takoma Park Post Office—where you can also pick up copies to share with your friends through letters and postcards. Noah’s stamp commemorating the July 2023 Women’s World Cup was released earlier this year.

This is Noah’s final published piece. He passed away from colon cancer on July 31, 2022, at age 33. Shortly before he passed, Noah learned that his illustration had been chosen, but he was not allowed to share that information. On October 24, 2022, the U.S. Postal Service announced Noah’s image would be the official Women’s World Cup stamp.

“It’s very heartening,” says Lucinda Leach, Noah’s mom, a retired art teacher. “We don’t have him with us anymore, but we have his work, and his work is being distributed so widely. I think they said they’re going to print 20 million copies of the stamps. So 20 million little reminders of Noah are flying around the country. It’s really a wonderful thing.”

“If there was one piece of art to be remembered by, this is kind of this perfect culmination of his interests,” says Jeffrey Macmillan, Noah’s dad, a professional photographer, “because he was fiercely devoted to soccer and to art.”

Noah’s team was Arsenal.

As a professional illustrator, Noah’s unique vision appears on murals and has been featured in publications such as Smithsonian magazine, the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

“I make pictures that tell stories with clear ideas, simple design, and obsessive attention to color,” said Noah, as quoted on his memorial page at the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned his undergraduate degree in communications design.

“After teaching 18 years, there are always a handful of students you will never forget. Noah MacMillan was one of those,” says John Hendrix, professor and chair of the MFA program in Illustration and Visual Culture. “Noah had a rare and sophisticated visual language that cut across both design and images. I was in awe of his ability to draw, use color, and think graphically about edge and shape so seamlessly. “He had it all inside when I met him. His voice simply had to find a home,” says Hendrix.

“When he was a little boy, Noah had trouble writing,” says Lucinda. “And his hand would kind of cramp up, and he’d be miserable. But then he would use that same hand to draw, and he would sit for hours and draw. He drew incredibly intricate scenes of battles and soccer games and other things. We just pretty much always knew that drawing was going to be a big part of his life.”

Like most kids growing up in Takoma Park, Noah started kicking the ball early through Takoma Soccer. He kept playing during his years at the Edmund Burke School and at Washington University in St. Louis.

Then at age 23, just as he was jumping into his illustration career, Noah was diagnosed with colon cancer. After a long year of treatment, he was given a clean bill of health.

“He ran a marathon to celebrate,” says Jeffrey. “He had seven years cancer-free. He felt great, got engaged. And then, bang, back again.”

“It’s not expected at that age,” says Jeffrey, “so it’s often overlooked”.

While living in St. Louis, Noah met his fiancée, Hitomi Inoue, also a Washington U. grad, whom Jeffrey calls Noah’s third passion (along with soccer and art). Hitomi recalls how excited Noah was to be asked to illustrate a stamp in the summer of 2020, even as he faced a relapse of colon cancer.

“He was in the middle of his first year of grad school, getting his MFA [masters of Fine Arts] at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and COVID happened,” says Hitomi. “[We] decided to go up to Vermont. We’re up there thinking we’re going to be there for three weeks. But then we ended up being there basically for a year.

“So Noah gets rediagnosed with cancer in June [2020]. It’s this crazy time where he had just restarted chemo. We were living at the lake. It’s beautiful, but we’re also very isolated from everything,” Hitomi continues. “And he gets an email from this art director who works on a lot of the stamps.

“Noah was like, yeah, I’m gonna design a stamp. And I was like, what?” Hitomi laughs, “Like a postal service stamp? He was like, yeah, it’s real.

So it’s a very dynamic and powerful stamp,” says Hitomi. It reflects Noah’s years of experience capturing movement and emotion with clean efficiency.

“He has a history of having done a lot of soccer art,” says Jeffrey, “which is how he probably popped onto the radar of the art director. Many of his first jobs were working for soccer publications in the U.S. and in Europe—and he was just devout follower of soccer.”

Noah’s family and friends remember him as an extraordinary  individual.

“Noah was a gentle soul,” says Lucinda. “He has two younger brothers who are twins [Seth and Julian]. He was just always sweet to them from the time they were born. Most kids, I think, would’ve resented having these other two babies come into their lives and turn everything upside down. But he just was always a really good big brother.

“And, you know, it’s a hard loss for them as well,” she adds.

“One of his best friends said that whatever you say about Noah sounds fake because it sounds too good to be true,” says Hitomi. “He was just very kind, like deeply kind and not superficially kind. He wasn’t really all about bullshit. He wasn’t going to be nice [just] to be nice, but because he was kind. He loved talking to younger artists and people who had just started freelancing to help them figure out
how to set up an office, how to get new clients. How to do taxes.”

With Noah’s combination of training and talent—and kindness—in mind, the Macmillan family has established the Noah Philip MacMillan Portfolio Plus Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis. This summer program provides intensive art classes to rising high school seniors to help them build their portfolios.

“It’s a really great program and hopefully we can fund more kids to go there and really build their confidence in artmaking and learn from the Wash U. professors, who are wonderful,” says Jeffrey.

Find out more about the Noah Philip MacMillan Portfolio
Plus Scholarship at tinyurl.com/bddyrzf8. Proceeds from the
sale of Noah’s prints will help fund the scholarship. You can
find Noah’s work at society6.com (search for Noah Macmillan).

This article was featured in the May 2023 Newsletter. Visit the Takoma Park Newsletter webpage to see the full list of past newsletters.