Art without background is essentially how Jimmy sees his work.

YOUTH    Growing up in forced isolation in the Dutch foster care system, there was no real contact in the outside world. His origins, gender and existence were actively and systematically combated with great violence through carefully designed government policy.   Just like for thousands of other children in the  residential youth care system, the Dutch government subsequently refused any form of accountability and justice.  In his later life, Jimmy was confronted with the most complex issues, for which there is no solution. 

CREATIVITY Jimmy started drawing and painting in 1992, after a childhood in which creativity, art and culture were considered 'pernicious and sinful' and any form of self-expression was punishable. He mainly drew babies and toddlers, both in portraits and in group representations, often based on seventeenth-century painting in the Low Countries.  His performances reflected on a stay in a children's home between the ages of three and four, in which naked babies played a dominant role through 'therapy'. After several periods of volunteer work, he started practicing various art forms in 2004, including weaving, nature art, glass mosaic and 4D projection.  

VICTORY Part of Jimmy's art reflects a search for the boy, as gender and identity, as the basis for existing at all.   In a distant form it is visible in the many boy portraits and figurative representations, more directly we see it in the collaboration with Tim, Alex and Jimmy11.  Yet his work is again and again found in a metaphorical make-believe world, in which the background is missing and reality never becomes immediately visible. 

Jimmy wrote several autobiographical books under a pseudonym, which are available in the libraries of the Netherlands and Flanders. He also became the regular illustrator for his good friend, the poet and wordsmith Lennart Willems, and found pleasure and satisfaction in landscape drawing, especially in pastel and watercolor. 

FUTURE From 2026, it will mainly be Tim, Alex and Jimmy11 who will continue his creativity.