by Linda Erbele
White County News
An artist from Helen won the cover contest for the 2025-2026 Get the Scoop magazine. Anna Wilkins’ paintings have been on the cover of Scoop three other times, in 2011, 2017 and 2019. This year’s painting involved a bear seen in Innsbruck.
“I had all these pictures that the people in Innsbruck had taken of the mama bear and five babies, because she’s got five babies,” she said. “I named it The Road to Freedom.”
She had painted the work originally as a fundraiser for the Helen Rotary Club, and it brought in $1,000.
Wilkins said she has been painting all her life and uses a variety of media, including oil, acrylic, plein air and watercolor.
“My daddy was my first teacher and he was an artist himself,” she added. “It wasn’t his career, but something he really liked to do. My mom painted some too, so I started early.”
She took art in high school and minored in art in college. She’s also taken lessons from local artists, like Judy Bynum George.
“She’s a great teacher,” Wilkins said.
Some of her work is hanging at Valhalla, and some at the Helen Arts and Heritage Center. She’s involved at both venues, helping with the center’s current refresh and working with Gayle Murdoch who manages art classes and summer camp at Valhalla.
“I teach a landscape class,” she said.
She especially enjoys the beautiful scenery in our area. She recently refreshed the Helen library sign and put the Indian Mound and the cows on it. Helen is another favorite subject.
She works as an RN on as-needed basis, but tries to get to her studio every day for a couple of hours.
Wilkins has lived full time in Helen 25 years, but her family has had a home there since the 1930s. She grew up in Decatur but visited Helen often.
“When we were teenagers, Helen was going through the big transformation,” she said. “I was 10 when we first inherited the family home. It was the old Helen then. And then of course, in the ‘60s, not long after we inherited that house is when they started converting Helen and changing it up. So we got to see all of that happen.”