Daren Wilkerson wanted to make a bold statement, so he surprised his wife with a 4ft-by-20ft painted logo amid boom in Sanders fan art to rival Obama in 2008

Paint the Bern: the man who put Sanders on his roof – and other art for Bernie

Marlo Wilkerson is nearly two years old and can barely speak a full sentence. But if you mention Bernie Sanders to her, she shouts the presidential candidate’s message to billionaires: “Enough is enough! You can’t have it all!” And if you ask her three-year-old sister Lily, “What do we do to Donald Trump?” she screams, “Take him to the dump!”

Their father, Daren Wilkerson, a resident of Castro Valley in northern California, has trained his daughters to preach Sanders’ message on cue – and this week, he’s using more than just his adorable daughters to drum up support for the Vermont senator. The 39-year-old super Sanders supporter has painted a giant blue Bernie logo on top of his house’s roof – an eye-catching sign in this left-leaning Bay Area suburb.

“I wanted a bold statement that says I’m voting for Bernie,” the high school English teacher said while standing below his 4ft-by-20ft rooftop painting, wearing pins that said “Bern Nerd” and “Bernie speaks for ME”. He added: “This is not an election where you go quietly to the polls and vote … We’ve gotta get ahead.”

Wilkerson – who now has occasional fans driving by and cheering his roof after a local television report aired on Monday – is one of a growing number of Sanders supporters using large, colorful works of art and other creative forms of expression to encourage voters to “feel the Bern”.

After watching a Sanders speech on YouTube last summer, Wilkerson said he felt more passionate about Hillary Clinton’s challenger than he has about any politician in his life.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Daren Wilkerson, 39, poses for a portrait with his daughter Marlo Wilkerson, aged 21 months, who is already fluent in Sanders slogans. Photograph: Gabrielle Lurie/The Guardian

“I just started crying,” said Wilkerson, who dressed up as Sanders on Halloween and has several traditional Sanders lawn signs in front of his house. “I thought that if I sat back and gave him my vote and didn’t do anything else for him, I couldn’t sleep at night. I knew I had to put my whole weight behind this man.”

His wife Sarah, a 32-year-old speech-language pathologist, said she was initially shocked – but pleased – when she drove home last week and saw the huge Bernie letters on her roof.

“He’s a politician who actually tells the truth,” she said. “I just hope the neighbors don’t hate us.”

After seeing the roof and the news coverage, some neighbors and friends have said they want to learn more about Sanders, Daren said. At least one neighbor has, however, made clear to him that he’s voting for Trump.

“I didn’t do this to impress the neighbors. I did this to send a message as far and wide as I possibly could,” he added.

Across California and beyond, Sanders fans are increasingly using big murals and other original art projects to raise the candidate’s profile as the campaign continues and as Sanders closes in on Clinton, long considered the frontrunner.

“It’s growing every week,” said Ken Harman, a San Francisco art gallery owner who runs the website Artists for Bernie. Harman – who published a blog during the 2008 race that chronicled campaign art dedicated to Barack Obama – said the recent boom in Sanders fan art resembles the momentum that built around Obama within various art scenes.

“Bernie is definitely appealing to a younger vote than Hillary, and when you get into the younger vote, you have more street artists involved,” said Haran, a 33-year-old Oakland resident. “For Bernie, it’s free advertising, which is nice … and it’s very organic. It’s not an advertising agency with a mission trying to come up with a statement that will capture a certain voter. It’s an individual who is actually inspired making something very true from the heart.”

In downtown Denver, a few blocks from the Colorado capitol building, street artist Gamma Acosta recently painted a 50ft-long Bernie mural featuring the 74-year-old’s face and the words “We the People”.

“It sets an example for the younger generation who is more into street art and murals that you have to speak up and that voting is important,” said the Denver resident, who goes by the artist name Gamma Gallery. He said he has followed Sanders for years and wanted to find a splashy opportunity to raise his profile in the swing state.

“A mural was my way to help him get a little bit of exposure, but now he’s getting plenty,” he said.

In Los Angeles, Sanders supporter Carlos Marroquin brought out a large Bernie puppet at a recent parade and spread images of the larger-than-life candidate using the hashtag #BigBernie on social media. “We wanted to make something that was very visible and would catch the attention of a lot of people,” he said. “Pictures are worth a thousand words.”

Other artists are using humor to try to energize voters. Artist Emek Golan recently created so-called “Bernie-Wan Kenobi” posters of Sanders dressed as the Star Wars character Obi-Wan Kenobi. The man from Portland, Oregon, whose artist name is simply Emek, said that he used revenues from poster sales to donate the maximum $2,700 to the Sanders campaign.

Sanders is pure like a jedi in Star Wars, the artist added. “He hasn’t pandered to special interests … He has had the same political philosophy since he started 30 years ago.”