We recently connected with Johnny Duncan and have shared our conversation below.

Johnny, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Everything I do now I wanted to learn. I just dove into what I was interested in and I’d always study the work, the process, and everything in between. Also just getting up and doing the work, even if it is just a flailing try at first. I’ve always learned by watching and doing.

Knowing what I know now I wish I wouldn’t have been as picky or strict with my interests. I find myself having to learn things I initially muted. As open as I was with being able to learn from everywhere I wasn’t as relaxed as I am now. I think I also fell into patterns of thinking that while I was so busy that certain doors would just open themselves and I’d keep myself at a plateau without realizing it. You have to do things you’ve never done before to get things you’ve never had and I lost sight of that at times. I would get distracted from my main goals.

Skills like self care, organization, humility, patience, forgiveness, and persistence I would say are most essential. You’ve got to take care of yourself to do anything you love and be able to have the proper bandwidth to tap into your true vision and execute that vision truly. For everyone that looks and sounds different but that feeling is the exquisite for us all and when your creative input/output are synchronized and you’re not dehydrated or sleep deprived you know you’re leveling up.

There’s always obstacles to overcome no matter who what when where or why, but it’s up to you to address them. I find that I was a massive obstacle in my own learning path. Just thinking that I know enough or I’m comfortable is such a mistake. I could have embraced my growing pains sooner to speed up my learning process. A lot of the growth in my work I can attribute to the growth of myself as a person and the parts of myself I’ve worked on have bled into my work.

Johnny, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Johnny Duncan but as an artist I go by JENKINS2D. I’m a full time artist and I create in a wide range of mediums from fine art paintings, digital illustration, street art, graphic design, clothing, photography, curation, magazines, events, and more. I’m still navigating the balance of all those things while being productive and making fruitful moves. I was always making art as a kid, like comics and random doodles, but I hadn’t really discovered where I belonged in art until I was 15 when I finally started painting. After that it was over, I was always working on something.

In no time I was developing my style across multiple mediums thanks to my time with street artists, classes at the Art Institute, and crashing art shows up and down the I-35 corridor in Texas. I even got tired of leaving my hometown just to find art events and started forging my own creative events in my area. Anything from monthly art markets to gutting a neighborhood home and turning it into a house gallery for a group exhibition.

Working in so many mediums while keeping the icons of my work consistent gives it a quality that not only is it of it’s own world, but ours too. You can see my work on clothing, walls, mashed up with photography, packaging, branding, and so much more and it remains cohesively JENKINS2D. No matter the medium you know who made it and I think that sets me apart from others.

I’m most proud of the journey my art has taken me on. Sometimes it seems like such a scary way to live, but I’m still at it. Still doing what I love and living off of it. People always tell me it’s really awesome that I found what I love so early on, but that doesn’t change the difficulty of perusing your dreams. I still get down and afraid at times, but you just have to use that to fight and keep going. My artwork has taken me to Tokyo, London, New York, and more. It’s allowed me to investigate my soul and share my findings with my audience. It’s put me in a position where everywhere I go people present their best selves to me. I couldn’t imagine not taking the leap of faith.

My work has a lot of repetitious motifs but that doesn’t always mean that I’ve defined them. I like to leave everything open to the audience because usually they’ll have some of the deepest interpretations that blows me away. One thing you’ll catch on to quickly is the egg, the third eye fried. Lots of breakfast food, monsters, animals, jewels, and of course my clouds. It all hints at a world of its own but you’ll also see my characters interacting with our world as well.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

People seem to think this is easy, like I’m just flinging paint all day and having fun. It’s a job, especially at the level of having clients, deadlines, paperwork, promoting, etc. There’s so much to it and there’s nobody that’ll do all the work for me. It’s hard to do original work as well, like you have to have a genuine following that cares about your work.

I’ve rarely touched fan art or taking work that asks me to leave the JENKINS2D vision behind. Often times I’m pushing money away just to stay true to my tune and to not get caught in the trap of taking work that doesn’t line up with my passion. That can hurt the wallet! Still I’d rather be approached as myself as opposed to generic artist. Now there’s nothing wrong with tributes and fan art, I’ll do a few here and there, but for me I’m like a gun for hire that uses specific ammo.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Back in September 2021 I was in a car accident with both my son and brother in the car. My ride ended up getting totaled and I was the only one who sustained injuries. It caused me to step down from the job I had at the time and I was left without a car. The only thing I could do was keep making art and push that even harder. I was forced into full time art again and I did it without even having a car. I was getting chiropractic treatments along with physical therapy and was taking it easy on murals and heavy work. It was cool to fall into the next step of my career with what seemed like an inconvenience turned into a blessing and I just ran with it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jenkins2d.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/jenkins2d/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/JENKINS2D
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/jenkins2d/
• Other: NFTS: https://opensea.io/collection/lucky-tags-armada-genesis-collection