Some of these are showcased at the Wilkes Art Gallery in an exhibit entitled Americana: A Tradition of Music and Craft.

Aita has been interested in painting musicians and instruments for some time and seized the opportunity to capture images of musicians at MerleFest. The four-day music festival is held on the campus of Wilkes Community College the end of each April.

“I have a passion for music, being a musician myself, and I feel that you should paint what your passion is about,” he said. “People can tell a dead painting, where an artist has just painted something to be painting it, compared to an artist painting what they really love.”

Aita as an artist/musician with a passion for the subject matter had been seeking a venue to create a series of paintings of musicians. Being primarily a portrait artist, the subject matter allowed Aita to merge portraiture and figure painting in a painterly photo-realistic style. The series of paintings displayed and captured the interaction of the musicians and their instruments. Aita said he feels there is an interplay of musicians, instrument and equipment that creates a sort of dance that is unique to each individual as well as instrument.

Painting is nothing new to Aita. It is an art he has been practicing for more than 25 years. Originally from Princeton, N.J., he attended Ohio State University where he studied architecture and commercial art. After a year in Ohio he transferred to Oklahoma University. There he majored in music and gradually changed majors over to commercial art and later painting.

Enticed by the foothills and mountains of Wilkes County, Aita was drawn to North Wilkesboro in 1987 after working with Terry Miller Design group as an architectural rendering artist and assistant to the art director in Norman, Okla.

In 1990 he married the love of his life, Gilda Gaskill, an art teacher at Central Wilkes Middle School. Together they have two children, Lina and Alison. The couple remodeled a turn of the century house and created Aita Studios. The studio consists of paintings, drawings, ceramic studios and now includes a 24 track recording studio and frame shop.

In 2000, Aita began working for Lowe’s Companies as a store planner.

“I was upset when I stopped painting,” he said. “It’s frustrating to let talent sit dormant…if you have a talent you can’t just ignore it. So it’s nice for me to be painting again after being sedentary.”

After six years with Lowe’s Aita has rekindled his art career and is now operating the studios full time.

Even though Aita’s current focus is on painting musicians, instruments and their interplay, he doesn’t limit himself to solely painting these things.

“I don’t just paint musicians. There are some artists who find something that they like painting, like landscapes, and that’s all they do...I don’t tend to do that. I’ve just never really landed on one thing.”

Aita’s exhibit, Americana: A Tradition of Music and Craft, opened last Friday at Wilkes Art Gallery and will run through April 29. The show is sponsored by Wilkes Regional Medical Center. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.