Ralph Oberg, Art of the West, January-February 2015

Ralph ObeRg

Still Climbing

Born to Run, oil, 28˝ by 36˝ “By three weeks of age, pronghorn fawns are on their feet, ready to go. To avoid predators and keep up with mom, this is an important evolutionary adaptation. Soon they can run with the herd effortlessly.”

By Barbara Coyner

H

ow do you celebrate your birthday when you hit 60? If you are Colorado artist Ralph Oberg, you book a trip to Nepal.

While it might not be on everyone’s bucket list, Oberg wanted to satisfy a deep longing to see the infamous peaks of that remote country. It was fittingly his first trip off the North American continent.

“I had the opportunity in 2010 to go to Nepal on a 200-mile trek, so I

hired my own personal porter, who happily carried my painting gear,” Oberg says of the adventure. “It allowed me to do 12 small paintings that now hang on my studio wall,” he adds, savoring the memories.

With the success of the Nepal trip under his belt, Oberg again traveled abroad in 2011.

“Shirley and I spent all of September driving throughout Switzerland, painting as we went,” he says,

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noting that next spring, there will be yet another overseas trip, this time to France and Switzerland.

“We’ve got to do this while we still can, and this time it’s Shirley’s turn,” he says of the five-week trip that he and his wife, artist Shirley Novak, have planned. Novak is well known for painting flowers, and the trip will enable the couple to arrive when Paris is in full bloom. Of course, once in Switzerland, they will be

All Fired Up, oil, 30˝ by 40˝ “I found this setting high in Yellowstone Park one fall, when the air was thick with smoke from distant forest fires, as it often has been lately. The fiery flame of the burning undergrowth added to the idea of a bull in full testosterone intensity and ‘all fired up.’”

back in the mountains, checking out the Alps and the resident wildlife.

“Still climbing” seems to be Oberg’s anthem in life. He’s not only climbed lofty peaks, but he’s managed to paint them as well. “My first love has always been the high Rocky Mountain wildernesses; high altitude is where I feel the freedom and bliss of just being alive,” says the artist, who at 64 recently completed a seven-day, six-night backpacking trip into the Needle Mountains of Southern Colorado. Noted as the most remote and rugged peaks in

Colorado, they include three mountains over 14,000 feet high, and dozens more at over 13,000 feet.

“This ‘Thread the Needles’ route has been on my bucket list ever since my twenties, when weather forced me to abandon the route,” Oberg says. “I am proud that I managed to complete it with a 40-pound pack and two younger, stronger friends to help.”

Oberg’s lifelong love of the outdoors, its wildlife, and the mountains means he’s always on the lookout for mood and solitude, as he paints plein air, or sketches for later work in the studio. “I love being outside in the world under the sky and looking for the elements that will stimulate a possible painting idea,” he says. “A good day in the field can come in any season and in most any weather or

place. Success with a sketch is the first criteria of a good day. I have painted in blizzards, until the palette is so full of snowflakes I can’t find my colors, which of course don’t stick to the panel anyway.”

Admitting that he’s slowed down his pace a bit, Oberg says, “A pleasant day, with slow moving clouds and a few friends around is the happy norm more now. I have always loved the Mountain West, but I can enjoy the desert and seacoast just as much.

But I’m not as tough as I used to be.”

Sprinkling in a fair amount of selfdeprecating humor, it’s apparent that Oberg is still tough—on himself.

As he reflects back on his twenties, bumming around in his Volkswagen, or strapping on a backpack to hike the Rockies or Alaska, he concedes that he didn’t take art, or making any

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Moonlight Serenade, oil, 38˝ by 36˝ “The song of the coyote was once considered emblematic of the West alone. Today the wily canine has extended its range to include virtually the entire nation. Where there are people, there are mice and other leavings that provide easy pickings for this master of survival. When hearing their harmonious duets, or group choruses, just after sundown, one can imagine there are meanings to their communications. Perhaps they are joyfully singing just to hear themselves sing.”

kind of living, very seriously. Always noted for his art abilities, his parents had supported his talent in childhood, and his Aunt Glenna had shuttled him around to museums and galleries, when he reached his teens.

For the family, it seemed a done deal that Ralph would graduate from high school, major in art in college, and go on to become an artist. Predictably, he did get an art

scholarship and spent two years at Colorado State University, but he felt his interest in more representational art, landscapes, and wildlife paintings were getting short shrift in the new age of modernism.

Oberg dropped out of college, but then gave formal education another try, this time at the Seible School of Drafting in Denver in 1971. An architectural firm gave

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him a “real job,” yet a deep restlessness stalked him. He climbed Mount Deborah in Alaska in 1973 with his brother, and it was there that he had his “aha moment.” He would pursue fine art full-time.

Breaking into the art scenes in Breckenridge and Santa Fe, New Mexico, he experimented with sculpture and dabbled in watercolors and acrylics, but working with

Sublime Colorado, oil, 24˝ by 28˝ “Colorado is my home and has been for the vast majority of my life. I imprinted on its high, rugged peaks as a boy and am still enthralled by their everchanging beauty. This classic view over Piney Lake is a favorite. In my younger days, I was usually up in the rocks near the tops instead of just enjoying them comfortably from below.”

oils proved to be his real calling.

Success was not instant, and again Oberg’s self-deprecating humor shines through, as he recounts getting serious about painting for a living when he was in his thirties. “I used to brag that I was a self-taught artist, until I realized I had an ignorant teacher,” he says with a laugh, grimacing at some of his earlier works. Yet Oberg knows that his paintings have improved, especially

after he enrolled in his first workshop in Scottsdale, Arizona, studying under Wayne Wolfe, who remains a dear friend and mentor.

“I also met Matt Smith during that workshop, and we’ve been running in double harness ever since,” Oberg says. “Through the years, we’ve traveled together and painted together.

We both started out penniless and were learning at the same time.”

Oberg became relentless in his

training and says one aspect that helped his art was learning the skill of self-criticism, something taught

by Wolfe and nurtured by peers, who included Smith, Clyde Aspevig, and Len Chmiel. “I learned how to analyze why a painting didn’t work and how to fix it,” he explains, noting that, once he started to teach workshops himself, he tried to convey the same skill to his students. “In learning the elements of design, you see

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how eyes look at a painting.”

Because Oberg’s father had been a naturally gifted teacher, Oberg modeled his teaching style after his father’s, noting that his approach features gentle criticism mixed with praise. “You have to give a little sugar with the spice,” he says, acknowledging that he no longer teaches, but instead focuses solely on his own work these days.

Achieving a respectable niche in the Western art world, Oberg has stayed with oils since the late 1970s, refining the way he works with them.

He remains partial to oils because of their workability, their richness and

their flexibility. A great fan of John Singer Sargent, he says Sargent constantly refined the techniques in his paintings, until his brushstrokes and expression looked effortless. “I started out with dry brush watercolors, when I was young,” Oberg says.

“I was just a renderer, being true to a photo.” Moving beyond copying photos meant pulling feelings and interpretation into his work. Here Oberg benefited from the workshops, but also grew just by going out and being in nature, where he could see what he was after in terms of subject matter before he ever touched the canvas.

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Ice Fall, oil, 42˝ by 42˝ “While in the Bernese Alps, I had the chance to hike up to the Fiescherhorn Glacier in the canyon above Grindelwald and just east of the Eiger.

I carried my paints on this six-mile day hike and did a 12” by 10” plein air study of this little meltwater fall coming down beside the remnant icefall, formed when a glacier moves over a steep cliff and breaks up into seracs. All the world’s glaciers are melting extremely fast. I have been in Alaska, Canada, the Himalayas, and the Alps and seen clear evidence of rapid ice melt that has occurred during our lifetimes. Historic photos show the changes very dramatically. This piece is my visual warning about global warming.” This painting won the Best of Show - Painting at the 2014 CAC Gold Medal Show.

Silence, oil, 24˝ by 48˝ “This scene fascinated me for years, as I often drove by it on the upper Gallatin River, when I lived in Montana. One winter, I stopped during a snowstorm and stood there blissfully in the cold, listening to the absolute silence of snow slowly falling. The soft gurgle of the stream was so natural it failed to register as sound. Of course, being pretty deaf helps, too.”

“I think my colors have gotten more harmonious and more accurate,” Oberg says of his current work, which centers largely on wildlife and landscape. “I’m still fairly literal. I do take liberties, but they are fairly subtle. I love working with a scene the way it is, but the beauty of painting is that you can make something better by manipulating it.”

Beyond his passion for the mountains and painting, Oberg finds much of his joy in being married to Shirley, whom he met in 1996 at a Scottsdale painting workshop and married a couple of years later.

Novak came late into her painting career, but the junction point at which she joined with Oberg proved nourishing for them both.

Their rural home, five miles outside Montrose, Colorado, features two studios, so they remain free to create their own works in their own work styles. Shirley admits that much of the home rhythm revolves

Ralph and Grandson Hunter in Alaska

around who is painting and who is finishing a piece.

While the two do critique each other’s work, Oberg admits that such discussions are handled “verrrry carefully.” In good natured fun, he opines that “Shirley uses every red in the palette” to paint her carefully cultivated poppies.

When the two take a break from their easels, they spend considerable time together, tending the flower gardens that Shirley prizes.

“The garden keeps us both healthy. I

am the unskilled labor in the venture and have to be directed,” Oberg says with a laugh, emphasizing that his wife’s constant support and sense of fun have been a true game changer for him. “I’ve never been happier in my life,” he says. “Shirley has given me the true freedom to pursue my dreams, and I am extremely fortunate to do what I want to do.”

Barbara Coyner is a writer living in Potlatch, Idaho.

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