The students were on their third day of painting landscapes. They had painted the sky, mountains and a field for the background and were concentrating on the animals, a cabin or a stream that would make the scene their own.

Seventh and eighth graders at Whitefish Middle School worked diligently last week to complete their work. Professional artist Nick Oberling walked around the room watching the students work.

Oberling took the first two days to help students create a basic landscape that would set the stage for them to make the work personal.

“Everybody is different in what they want in a landscape,” he told students. “There’s no one that’s better or worse than another. I’ve given you the generic and now you have to decide on the specifics you want.”

The students had a palette full of paints, but there was no brown. How do we get that, they asked.

“Mix yellow, blue and red,” Oberling instructed. “You can make every kind of brown there is.”

Oberling is a landscape painter whose work is displayed in museums across Montana and the United States. Much of his work focuses on Montana and Glacier National Park.

Oberling told the students about when he was a young artist first starting out. He would take breaks from his day job in New York City and head to Central Park to sketch trees.

“I wanted to be out in nature and in that world,” he said. “Even though I had to work I still wanted to be involved in art.”

A grant from the Whitefish Community Foundation to the Hockaday Museum of Art provided the funding for the art program that brought Oberling into the classroom.

Kathy Martin, director of education at the Hockaday, said the funding allows the museum to bring art to the students.

Martin brings in artwork for sixth graders to see and learn about. Then in seventh and eighth grade they get the chance to spend time working with a professional artist.

“It allows them to make a connection between the picture on the wall and the people who paint them,” said Martin.

Oberling said he works to teach students that creating art work is more than copying a photograph. It’s about creating an atmosphere and recreating those things in nature that are too subtle for a picture to capture.

“I want people to be aware that they can paint even if it’s just for fun,” he said. “I had a great teacher and working in the classroom lets me relay that to the next generation.”