Background of Jimmy Groen
Confronting the most intricate challenges life had to offer during his childhood he spent in extreme conditions in the Dutch youth care (foster care) system, Jimmy turned to artistic expression in 1992 as a vital means of exploration, reflection, and representation. Having been denied access to mental health services for the majority of his life, creativity became not merely a tool but a lifeline—his gateway to a self-fashioned 'Magic paradise' built upon the reclamation of gender, identity and liberation from the erasure and enforced social isolation of his early years.
Following a period of diverse volunteer work, e.g. in archaeology, Jimmy committed fully to his artistic path in 2020. He became affiliated with the Fantastike collaborative studio in Maastricht, where he remained until December 2023—a formative era that marked his inaugural exhibitions. His creative growth was further enriched through formal art education in Belgium, while he engaged in numerous thematic projects and series, including Non-Inclusive Lives Matter, The Arab World, and the portrait series Queer Identity in Childhood.
Jimmy authored two autobiographical works under a pseudonym, both published in 2020 and 2021. Over the following four years, he immersed himself in various media—collage, mixed techniques, and experimental formats—before pivoting in 2025 toward a more layered multimedia practice. This shift introduced elements such as video, audio, installation, and handcrafted integrations, signaling a deliberate expansion of his conceptual scope and technical range.
That same year, he launched the digital series Phantoms—an inquiry into the surreal and elusive, echoing the paradox in Led Zeppelin’s famed lyric: “What is and what should never be.”
Currently, he is developing the series Natural Form in Nature, a meditation on organic patterns and nature’s experimental impulses. Complementary projects include There 's no today, a temporal collage blending epochs as if yesterday were refracted from tomorrow, and Entering the Ex-Situ Scale, inspired by microscopic perspectives. Through it all, creativity remains the foundation of Jimmy’s singular alternative identity—an act of survival and sanctuary in his self-created realm of imaginative freedom, his 'Magic paradise'.