Raised in Colorado, Ralph Oberg found the mountain wilderness his spiritual and artistic home early in life. He always knew he would be an artist, and after a brief stint in illustration, he began his fine art career focused on North American wildlife and birds. In the tradition of Carl Rungius, he began painting outside extensively to learn the color and texture of nature.

Oberg is a signature member of the Northwest Rendezvous Group, the Society of Animal Artists and the Plein Air Painters of America. One of 11 artists featured at the 2023 Woolaroc Retrospective Exhibit & Sale, he received the 2020 Prix de West Wilson Hurley Memorial Award and, in 2019, the Purchase Award from the Briscoe Museum’s Night of Artists show. At the 2015 Buffalo Bill Art Show & Sale in Cody, Wyoming, he received the Wells Fargo Gold Award, and at the 1988 show he was awarded the Bill Weiss Purchase Award for the Whitney Gallery at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. In 2014, he received the California Art Club’s (CAC) Gold Medal for Painting at the 103rd CAC Gold Medal Exhibition, and at the 2012 Western Visions Show he was awarded the Trustees Purchase Award for the collection of the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming.

Oberg’s extensive travels in the North American wilderness on foot and horseback provide his primary inspiration. Although wildlife often takes center stage, he enjoys pure landscapes as well. He chooses to place his animals in carefully designed, yet natural, habitat landscapes. His love of the mountain country has focused his travels all over the West and, more recently, Nepal and Switzerland.