Meet Jeff and John of Winkle Studio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff and John.

We appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We are Jeff & John. Identical twins. John went to college for graphic design, hated it, so he dropped it and graduated as a painting major with a minor in sculpture. I went to college for graphic design, loved it, graduated as a graphic design major with an illustration minor. After graduation, we delayed our “art” careers and took an opportunity to start a landscape company along with our boss at the time. A year into it, I decided to find a graphic design job but John stuck with it for 23 more years.

One day, in 2014, we went for lunch at the Friendly Stop in Glendale, Ohio. At that time, I was well into my design career and had left my agency design job and took the leap into the world of freelance graphic design and was really digging it. John was still running his landscape company and not digging it so much. Over the yrs when we would meet for lunch, we would talk the possibility of creating artwork together someday. We just couldn’t get the idea out of our heads. On the way to lunch that day, we saw a building for sale — It would be a perfect spot for an art studio — IF we were artists. We quickly realized it was way over budget (as if we even had a budget, it was all talk & all dreaming). However, we decided we HAD to turn DREAMING INTO DOING. Buying a building and making it an art studio was now in our brains and we couldn’t get it out.

Enter, our hometown of Ludlow Ky. We spent the next few days revisiting and reconnecting with why we loved it so much. It had declined over the yrs but there were glimmers of a comeback and we wanted to be a part of it. We found a building there that we could actually afford because it was total crap & needed so much work. We bought it. We started. We had only a slight idea what we were doing. Several yrs later, we bought a second building to renovate. Now we have a slightly better than slight idea. 🙂🙂

Anyway, John sold his landscape company in 2016 to focus on our studio as a career. He does the heavy lifting as the full-time artist doing all the painting, drawing, framing, etc. while also taking care of the day-to-day maintenance of the two buildings which currently have four rentable spaces that help create income for the studio. At this time, I still freelance full-time as my primary career and then do the social media, concepting, and compositions for the studio as my second career.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Ha! Definitely not a smooth road. There are lots of struggles in the art world and I could ramble on for days about them but it is different for everyone, so I will just say you have to be gritty, patient and creative to figure out ways to make it all work. Regardless of how things look on Instagram, overnight success is not a reality for the vast majority of artists.

For me, finding time to build an art business while still freelancing is a huge challenge. I always have to put my graphic design work first because it is my primary source of income. I know that if I was able to put in more focused energy into the art studio, it would work out financially, but it’s more of a process that has to happen over time. I already left my “comfy” job once when I was 41 to go freelance so I’m not going to put myself or my wife through another transition until the time is right. I would, however, like to remind her that going freelance was one of my best moves ever. 🙂🙂

For John, who works full-time for the studio, I would say one of his biggest struggles is putting so much heart and effort into the work (and the two buildings we own) while still trying to carve out a consistent and sustainable income. There is certain amount of delayed gratification that comes with starting something completely new because the ratio of time, energy and effort spent is nowhere near in balance with amount of income coming in. We have had a lot of success selling our work over the years but we still have some work to do to get the studio to what we would call a sustainable level.

Sustainability is the keyword. Our vision is not a hobby or side hustle, our vision is to be a viable studio that makes the kind of living we know we can make. We are getting there, but like I said earlier, it is a process that does not happen overnight.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Pretty sure we exist to make something from nothing. To turn sh!t into shinola. Whether it’s a blank canvas, wall or page— a deteriorated building, or a pile of dirt. That’s just what we were made to do. Hopefully, that makes some sort of positive difference to someone, somewhere, at some point.

For the art studio, we specialize in creating paintings that people say are unlike anything they’ve seen (especially our work of local iconic landmarks). We get a lot of “your work is beautiful!”, or “pretty!”, or “gorgeous!” and that is awesome, and we REALLY appreciate that, but we also long for it to be more than that. We want it to be intriguing, meaningful, badass and have more under the hood. Not only are we painting beautiful things, we are painting 23 years of John owning a landscape company and NOT painting. We are painting that same amount of years of Jeff doing graphic design to meet client objectives and NOT necessarily creating anything for himself. We are painting passion — and inspiration, and contrast, and work ethic, and faith, and questions, and anxiety, and fear.

We are most proud that we finally turned our DREAMING into DOING by starting the art studio. We are also really proud of the renovations to the studio and to the building we purchased next door. We have been able to take two buildings that were basically in disrepair and restore them back to beautiful and functional spaces.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
We give a lot of credit to our parents for believing in us when we said we were going to go to college for art and graphic design. They didn’t even question it. They didn’t even say maybe you should get a degree in something that gives you more options. They just knew we would go and we would be fine as long as we worked hard and showed ambition.

We also give a lot of credit to our high school art teacher, Mrs. Smith, who saw the potential for creative livelihoods in us. She was the first to encourage us to consider going to college for art or graphics. I wish she were here today so we could thank her and show her how much she meant to us.

We have had so many folks along the way who have played a part in who we are but I’m afraid if I start naming them, I will forget someone and feel really crappy about it. They know who they are and we have probably reached and told them at some point because we are grateful for their support.

Contact Info:

• Website: jeffandjohnwinklestudio.com
• Instagram: @jeffandjohnwinklestudio
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeffandjohnwinklestudio/