Jeff Watkins Spotlight
Jeff Watkins
Written by Nor Osborne, May 2025
Jeff Watkins vividly remembers the moment when he realized opening an art gallery in Granville was a possibility for him.
“I was driving down Broadway and glanced over and saw that the children's clothing store that had been in one of the storefronts was covered in brown paper. And I just knew it was time.”
10 years later and the same giddy smile spreads across his face as he recounts the story of how ‘Art at 43023’ came to be.
“I dropped everything to call my friend, another artist, Lee Anne Faler. We’d been talking about how Granville needed a gallery- something that’d have to be on the main street, not a side street and not upstairs so we could get traffic. But there’s not a lot of storefronts like that available in Granville, so we had been waiting a while.”
As soon as the ‘For Rent’ appeared in that brown papered window, the business partners ran to claim it, starting their very own co-op gallery.
‘Art at 43023’ now stands at 125 E Broadway, an exciting and diverse array of the art of many local artists. Each section of the store is dedicated to a different artist- either a guest artist that is featured in the store for a few months or a partner artist that has their art featured for as long as they work in the store.
Jeff and Lee Anne chose to adopt this business model with the advice of their friend and local painter, Paul Hamilton.
“Paul was really instrumental in helping us start this gallery. He’d been in galleries all his life, he knew the ins and outs,” Jeff says. “He gave us the philosophy of our business that we’ve stuck with- keeping guest artists coming in every couple of months. That way people come back- if you never change things out, people might come in today, but why would they come again in 2 months? Paul advised us with that, as well as the idea to host parties celebrating the different artists periodically, so we can keep drawing people in- reintroducing ourselves to the area and keeping us in business.”
“We’re more than just paintings,” Jeff adds. “I’m not sure people who haven’t been in the store understand that but we have a really wide variety of art. Right now we’ve got a woodworker, a fiber artist, 3 different kinds of glass artists, 4 different types of jewelry makers. And at any given time we have a photographer and 4-6 painters.”
There is even a little section for a budding crochet artist, the 12 year old daughter of the kiln fire glass artist currently residing in the space.
“She’s made a lot of really cool little crochet pieces, so we put in a little basket for her and she's sold almost $150 worth of items in the last two months,” Jeff commented. “It’s been really nice to see a young artist get her start here.”
Jeff is one of the painters with his painting regularly occupying a part of the space. A large array of natural landscapes decorate his section of the store, serene scenes of the seaside, barns, and other rural views. Jeff primarily uses oil paint, but has recently begun using pastels as well.
“I’m a big outdoors person, I do a lot of fishing and hiking. I like to paint based on those kinds of scenes. That’s where it attracts me.”
Jeff hasn’t always been a painter, he lived a very different life before establishing ‘Art at 43023’. He studied education at Ashland University and taught for a few years before shifting careers to work in a more legislative environment. He briefly worked for a state legislator before settling at the Ohio Farm Bureau for 25 years, helping farmers understand the laws that affect them.
Jeff didn’t even think about pursuing art until he was 55 years old, when his sister reminded him of how much he had loved to draw as a kid.
“It was Christmas of 2008 when one of my younger sisters gifted me sketch pads and drawing pencils because she remembered how I used to draw all the time when I was younger. So I started drawing again.”
“Then I started talking about drawing with the wife of a friend of mine, a wildlife painter. And she asked, ‘Would you ever want to try painting?’ and I mean, I’d never painted, I wouldn’t have any idea how to start. But she offered to help me get started.”
“So a month later, she called me up and let me know she was going to a 2 day workshop in Lima with this really fantastic painter and invited me to come with. And at that workshop it just hit me. So I started painting.”
Jeff went on to take a wide variety of classes with many different instructors, developing a strong skill set before he went on to establish the gallery.
“The people part is what’s huge for me. All my working life was spent working with people, so I really enjoy the community aspect of the gallery,” Jeff says. “I’ve met so many great artists and great customers, just really good, solid people to be around.”
“The talent I’ve seen in local people is amazing. I’m never not amazed by how much talent there is here. For me, it's just enjoyable to see what people can do.”
