YOUTH Born in 1962 in Apeldoorn, at the age of 2.8 years old  I was taken from my home and family and brought into a residential children's home. Besides of some traumatic periods I felt safe in the group of toddlers, while there was no contact with any adults. At age four I was placed in a specially selected foster family that turned out to be very sadistic and extreme violent toward me and two brothers. While in forced social isolation it appeared they hated boys and prevented me to experience my gender or have contact in the outside world.At age seven I tried to end my life.  Creativity was forcibly punished and at age ten I mentally broke. While I did attend high school, my life was completely empty. At age sixteen I tried to escape but without any contact in the outside world I had to return from the woods after some weeks. At age seventeen I escaped after being dehumanized for several months. The youth care organization, - fully aware of systematic abuse, torture and many weeks of confinement in the dark refused medical and psychological help and left me homeless in the streets and in the woods, until I left  the system with permanent physical injury and complex mental health problems.

CREATIVITY In 1992 I started painting and drawing  portraits  of infants and toddlers, until one year later I was triggered by the Bulger murder in  the United Kingdom. My world collapsed and I started painting day and night. Until 1997 I created about 450 paintings and (large) drawings about unfinished memories and intrusive images.  Before  a move to the southern part of the Netherlands I destroyed almost the entire collection. This happened again with much work, created between 2004 and 2018, including 3D objects, glass mosaic sculptures, weaving and reproductions of  prehistoric tools. With time being my greatest enemy I studied  parts of fundamental physics to understand (space) time and use it in a part of my work. 

PROCESSING From 2019 I worked almost  daily to process  events  from childhood, to explore a stolen gender and identity. I called it an 'identity restoration studio' exploring to reclaim my original boyhood and sense of being a boy.  I expressed myself in many works in  various media, which process is still ongoing.  Between 2020 and 2023 I was a member of the joint Fantastike studio in Maastricht which marked my first exhibitions. 

COLLABORATION Being refused access to mental health care and the diversity communities in my country, I work in isolation in my home studio, happily together with Tim and Alex and recently with Sven, using creativity to process, explore and communicate. Creativity and  exploring gender and identity go hand in hand. It is both developing my sense of being a (creative)  boy as gender and in lifestyle, beyond biological age and social expectations,  as radical queer  to gain  the ultimate victory over a system that tried to permanently erase me.