Gallery exhibit features small works

Local artist Nicholas Oberling is an award-winning landscape painter born in Athens, Greece and was raised on the North Shore of Long Island, New York. 

He is known for his meticulous details and dramatic skies in his paintings. Oberling’s small works will be featured at Phillips Gallery for the month of December in an exhibition titled “Small Bites.” This small works exhibit showcases the inherent beauty of his work and above all the special atmosphere that all the artist’s works radiate. His work strives to imbue others with a sublime love of nature and the natural landscape. The whole exhibit will remain on view through Saturday, Dec. 2. After that date, customers are allowed to take their purchases with them to allow for holiday gift-giving.

Oberling enjoys plein air painting where his instincts take over and allow him to just paint and feel the environment. 

“I want to get to the soul of something, to the mood, the atmosphere. I want people to have a sense of place about my paintings, so I do what it takes to get that” says Oberling.  
He devotes a large portion of each painting to the sky. The sky tells the mood of the day, and it sets the mood in his work. He finds clouds beautiful and mysterious and finds sunny days boring. He likes it when clouds appear, then start to blur edges and create mystery. There is restlessness in nature that isn’t otherwise there without the clouds. He strives to express the mood and nature’s singular presence in each of his works.

Oberling received his training at the Art Students League in New York. He is a founding member of the Montana Painters Alliance and served 11 years as a board member at the Hockaday Museum of Art. He has been selected as a Quick Draw artist and participant at the C.M. Russell Museums auction and the Montana Land Reliance and Treasure State art auctions. He was an Artist in Residence at Glacier National Park, Helena National Forest and a Top 100 finalist in the Art for the Parks competition. He is the founder and organizer the Big Hole River in Paint fundraiser which has had regional and national exposure. He has participated in Masters in Montana invitational auctions on behalf of the Hockaday Museum of Art, the Yellowstone Art Museum, and the Nature Conservancy of Montana. Oberling’s work is represented in the permanent collection of the Hockaday Museum of Art.   

The opening of the exhibition is Friday, Dec. 1 from 5-7 p.m. with an artist talk at 5:30 p.m. Gallery hours are Wednesday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The gallery is located inside the Kalispell Center Mall, 20 North Main Street in Kalispell.