Wilkie was elected a member of the council of the Victorian Artists Society, and was one of the founders of the Australian Art Association and its honorary secretary for three years.
[2] He occupied a studio, during WW1 and into the early 1920s, on the fourth floor in the Austral buildings 115-119 Collins Street, Melbourne, where John Mather, Charles E. Gordon-Frazer, Alexander Colquhoun and the photographer J.W.
John Shirlow commented that 'the distinctive charm of the best of Wllkle's work is his tenderly sympathetic observation of the character of girlhood, and of young womanhood,' that assured him an 'honoured place' in the genre.
[12] In September 1926 Wilkie was appointed curator of the Art Gallery of South Australia at Adelaide replacing the recently resigned H. van Raalte,[13] and proved himself a popular[14] and most efficient and painstaking officer.
[17] In 1934 Wilkie joined a University of Adelaide anthropological expedition to Central Australia where he painted portraits of First Nations people near Cooper Creek.