Jimmy Groen (born 1962, Netherlands) is a contemporary artist whose extensive body of work serves as a sovereign counter-archive against institutional violence, state neglect, and severe childhood trauma. Alongside his art on trauma and identity, Jimmy creates landscapes in oil and pastels, nature-themed works (such as his 'Leaves' series), watercolors of the Arab world, and portraits of toddlers and babies.

Early childhood 

Jimmy lived with his parents and family until the age of two and a half, after which he was placed by the Dutch child protection system into a children’s home. There, he experienced a peer- and infant-oriented attachment environment until he was about four years old which would determine his further life.

Foster care 

Following this period, he was placed into a fundamentalist foster home on the  Dutch Veluwe region, where he was held for thirteen years. During this time, he was subjected to systemic physical, psychological, and sadistic abuse, including gender-based torture.

Although he was tested for pre-university education (VWO), he was sent to a reformed secondary school, where he was severely bullied and excluded because he was neglected and forced to wear girlish clothes.  The severity of this unrelenting terror drove him to attempts of suicide at both seven and seventeen years old. Throughout his placement, he was kept in forced social isolation and subjected to forced labor, compelled to perform all the housework for his foster parents and experienced severe types of dehumanization.

Despite clear signals, the authorities failed in their strict duty of care, choosing bureaucracy over the safety of a child. At age sixteen, Jimmy attempted to escape the foster family but failed, having no connection to the outside world. One year later, he successfully escaped, but the youth care organization abandoned him on the streets and in the woods so that his story would remain concealed. Due to this, he was unable to get any vocational training. 

Attending art school was impossible anyway: in the fundamentally Christian foster family, everything was suppressed in a totalitarian manner, including creativity. The foster parents viewed art and culture as 'of the devil' and made statements such as "all art on earth must be destroyed."

 

Identity

To survive these prolonged atrocities, Groen’s mind adapted through fragmenting (labeled in mental health care as "Dissociative Identity Disorder"). His art is not a singular creative outlet, but often a direct collaboration between his equal co-identities: Tim, Alex, and more recently, Sven. Each identity holds fragmented memories of the past and contributes uniquely to a visual vocabulary consisting of many drawings, paintings, and mixed-media works (in: Realms of the Unseen, Tim draws back, They are everywhere but nobody knows who they are).

Public 

Under the pseudonym Jasper Heijting, he documented this harrowing reality in the Dutch autobiographical books Gepleegd (Committed) published by Tobi Vroegh in Amsterdam and Hoe word ik Tim? (How Do I Become Tim?),  self - published at Pumbo.nl. 

Jimmy, decided in 2026 to publish his trauma artworks online under the name Realms of the Unseen. This is a counter-archive against the lack of protection for marginalized and excluded people by the Dutch government. His digital archive has been officially selected by the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) to be preserved as permanent cultural and historical heritage.