John Winkle

Jeff and John Winkle are identical twins who grew up in the small town of Ludlow, Kentucky. John went to college for graphic design and hated it, so he dropped it and graduated as a painting major with a minor in sculpture. Jeff went to college for graphic design, loved it, and graduated as a graphic design major with a minor in illustration. After graduation, they delayed their "art" careers and took an opportunity to start a landscape company along with another friend. A year after starting that company, Jeff decided to pursue graphic design as a career but John continued with the landscape company for 23 more years. One day, in 2014, they decided to meet for lunch at a local dive near Jeff's house. At that time, Jeff was three years into freelancing on his own after 20 years of working for someone else as a designer and John was still running the landscape company. Over the years, when they would meet at lunch, they would talk about the possibility of having an art studio and creating artwork together and couldn't get the idea out of their heads. It just kept coming up in their conversations over and over. On the way to lunch that day, they saw a building for sale and thought it would be a perfect spot for an art studio -- IF they were artists. They quickly realized the building was way over budget (as if they had a budget, it was all talk & dreaming). However, they decided they HAD to turn their DREAMING INTO DOING. Buying a building, making it an art studio and creating work together was now even more on their brains and they just couldn't shake the idea. Enter, their hometown of Ludlow, Kentucky. They decided to spend the next few days revisiting and reconnecting with why they loved it so much. It had declined over the years but there were glimmers of a comeback and they wanted to be a part of it. They found a building they could afford because it was in need of so much work. They bought it. They started. They had only a slight idea what they were doing. Several years later, they bought a second building. They joke and say that now they have a slightly better than slight idea. Currently, Jeff still freelances full time as a graphic designer but does the social media, co-concepting, and compositions for the art studio as a second career. John works for the art studio full time and does all the painting, drawing, framing and managing of the day-to-day operations.