Joe Coble spent his childhood on the streetcars of Chicago and going to golf courses in order to caddy for the likes of Charles Walgreen (yes, the drugstore scion). He attended government schools and upon graduating he enrolled at Navy Pier at the University of Chicago. Unsure of what to major in, he selected Architecture while standing in line to enroll, because it was listed first after Agriculture and Agrimony in the college catalogue. While at Navy Pier taking a much dreaded calculus class, Joe was suddenly drafted into the Korean War. He states he woke up one very dark cold morning in Fort Knox, Kentucky delighted (while others grumbled) that he was not in his calculus class. After the Korean war, Joe went to the University of Mexico where he studied fine art & painting eventually returning to the University of Illinois, where he finished his degree in Architecture.

Residing in Urbana, Illinois, Joe has been working as an architect for many years, and has designed buildings big & small that dot the landscape through-out the country, from Florida to California, New York to Ohio, and of course through-out the prairies of Illinois.

He started painting in conjunction with his architectural practice, rendering buildings that existed only in his mind's eye and that of his clients. His exquisite watercolor paintings feature architecture within the landscape & celebrate a civilized society highlighting man's desire to construct buildings as both utilitarian & objects of great beauty. He uses the warm and cool colors of the prairie as his palette to create a vision that is unique to the land of the big sky.

The work on this website highlight the diversity of Joseph Cobles’ renderings both commercial and residential as well as some of his watercolors from Torugas.