About Jeroen

I was born on August 25th, 1969, at 14:37, in the small village of Leek in Groningen, The Netherlands. Shortly after, my family moved to Oudeschild, on the island of Texel, where I spent my early years. One of my earliest memories is telling my mother that I wanted to make the world more beautiful.

From a young age, I’ve been deeply connected to the idea of beauty, especially in the human form, and to creating art that inspires and uplifts. This early desire to understand, enhance and create beauty has guided my life, shaping my interests and career choices.

After a tumultuous ride through the public educational system in the Netherlands, and being first expelled from the art academy in Rotterdam, I arrived at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (GRA). It was 1992, and the school at that time was quite different from the current one.

At the GRA I studied Industrial Design and halfway my studies, via a two-week workshop at the Royal College of Art where I met my wife, I landed in Helsinki, Finland. There I started as an exchange student at the Industrial Design department, but after a few days I felt disillusioned and managed against all odds to enter a Master’s degree program called ‘Design Leadership’. And so my life got one of the so many unexpected turns.

What followed were many years, until about 2005, when I played design consultant, design teacher, UX designer, service designer, and whatever else was the ‘Soup-du-Jour’ in the ever-changing world of design. It was enjoyable for a short time, but helping organizations design things for people who don’t need them felt empty and unsatisfying.

From 2005 until around 2015, I owned a software startup company. It took me 10 years to realize that I better do things that I can actually do myself, and that running after people, trying to find and dealing with so-called investors is not for me. This was simultaneously a bitter realization, as I had expended a considerable amount of money and time without achieving any tangible results. Lessons learned, now move on.

One day I asked myself, literally: if you think you are such a smart designer, why can’t you design your own life better then?

And so I began, looking at my intrinsic skills, my drivers, and motivations, my desires, my resources, my goals in life and so forth. Questions like these resulted in many more questions, and soon I found myself lost. It was when I needed to prepare for a 5-day workshop on creativity at the Art Academy in Tallinn that one of those lightbulb moments happened. When drawing a success/failure timeline of my life, I saw the ups and downs. Next, I saw how the downs coincided with doing work I did not truly enjoy, and how the ups were the projects I loved.

In this phase of my life my focus is on learning about Consciousness, writing about this, creating artworks that touch upon aspects of it and teach and council. I am almost in my tenth year of this phase and only feel I have just begun.

Read more about how this currently manifest as a creative output in my Artist Statement.

I am a member of the following organizations: the Society for Scientific Exploration, the International Association for Near-Death Studies, and The Astrological Association.

Currently residing in Hattula, Finland, I am focused on painting and studying Consciousness, exploring its relationship with life on Earth.

You could contact me through this form