Fine art and music at Chastain art festival

“If I do jazz you’re going to find saxophones and musical notes flying all over the place,” said Wilkerson recently, as she prepared for a show at the Chastain Park Arts Festival. Painting to the sensual “Nocturne” by acoustic duo Montana Skies, she produced a canvas that “looks like there’s a guitar and a cello in love with each other.”

Wilkerson is among the 185 artisans and artists who will display their work on a wooded lane overlooking Chastain Park during the two-day festival Nov. 3-4.

The north Atlanta festival will offer fine art and crafts, a children’s area and local food and beverage concessions including “gourmet” food trucks. The festival was organized by Atlanta Foundation for Public Spaces and by volunteer artists.

Wilkerson, a North Cobb High School graduate, began painting as a young girl, but became serious about her craft a few years ago when she put herself in a self-imposed retreat at her parents mountain cabin in Cleveland, Ga. She worked at the Crimson Moon Cafe in Dahlonega and “painted like a mad woman,” with her stereo on automatic repeat.

She takes things to extremes sometimes. (She listened to one tune by Nashville songwriter Chuck Cannon more than 1,000 times as she worked on the painting to go with it.)

Wilkerson also likes to bring her brushes and canvases and paint while minding her tent at the arts festivals that she attends, but refrains from pounding the same song into the ground out of consideration for her festival neighbors. “It typically drives people nuts.”

“When I’m painting live at a show, people like to watch me paint and I love doing that,” she said. “Most shows work with me. If they don’t allow it, I don’t paint… Really, music moves me, and music moves my brush.”