"I want my art to change people's minds so people can change the world."

Brian Wilkes is an artist and author known for his bold colors and sensitive portrayals, who strives to bring his audience to greater awareness of the natural world, rural life, and deeper levels of family. Wilkes has been creating art for over 50 years, receiving a degree in art education in 1974. He determined at age 68 that it was time to make art his primary focus again.

His approach, called Convergent Media Art, expertly merges a variety of artistic skills with innovative technology to create unique, multi-layered, textured pieces.

His work has been compared to Van Gogh, Duchamp, Stone, and Kinkade.

Wilkes's message is "Family is everything, but everything is family". His art examines his own ancestral links to the noble families of three continents (most of his collectors are titled nobility), and spiritual kinship with the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms as perceived through his Native American ancestry and training. "According to tradition, I descend from an eagle, a wolf, a bear, a dragon, and a mermaid. These stories cause us to reconsider who and what we call family."

A descendant of farmers and ranchers as well as kings and emperors, his art celebrates both the strength of humble country values and the romance of chivalry and castles, with works designed to compare the nobility of farmers and ranchers with the vulnerability of power and royalty. "It's infuriating when coastal elites call rural America 'flyover country', and the hard-working people who feed the world 'a basket of deplorables'. I want my art to change people's minds so people can change the world."

Brian Wilkes, Pinckneyville, IL 62274
BrianWilkesArtist@gmail.com