As an art student in Amsterdam, I learnt the technical and traditional art of drawing and painting and was taught to observe the world around me. My early career as an art teacher included a post at a secondary school; a year as an exchange teacher in Los Angeles, USA and a few years at my former teacher training college in Amsterdam. I was then appointed to teach drawing, documentation and perspective at the HTS(Higher Technical College for Architecture and Design, Utrecht) where art was about depicting the reality of the real world as closely as possible.

By 1990, having retired from teaching, I decided to start afresh. This time my aim was to create art through the honest representation of images, colours, shapes, lines, contrasts, rhythms and changes – producing work that would not represent a recognizable or known structure but be an art form in its own right. Initially, I would title the works with names to distinguish them from one another but then to avoid suggesting their meaning to the viewer, I would simply name them 'Vandylism'. I can not claim that all my work has been created purely from within. The influence of the surrounding countryside and the light of North Holland continue to inspire me.