Januz Art
who is Januz Art?
who is januz art?
Arjan Vergeer aka Januz Art is an artist working from his hometown Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His moniker by most of his friends and family is Januz, so this is how the name “Januz Art” came to life. From a very young age, Arjan always loved to draw, which naturally led to his desire to professionally learn to paint. He started with traditional paint with acrylic and oil paints and graduated in 2001 from the art school De Willem De Kooning Academy. Since then, he has been working with many clients, mostly making t-shirt designs, illustrations, wall paintings, party decorations, tattoo designs, landscapes, character designs, album covers, posters, and many more. His style is versatile, but it always includes recognizable “Januz Art elements” like ornaments, bright colors, and psychedelic patterns. Furthermore, his art is very detailed and unique.
In 2001 he won two design competitions, which brought him twice to the land of the rising sun, Japan. He travelled with a delegation of people to celebrate the 400 years of trade relations between Japan and the Netherlands. Japan felt like home, and he absolutely wants to go back there one day. Since then, Arjan is much inspired by Japanese manga and pop culture, robots, and mech-art.
Arjan grew up in Gouda with his father, building Dutch Street-organs. The design language of colorful ornaments as used in the facades of the organs is another significant source of inspiration for him. This is also where his love for natural flowing lines like in “Artnoveau” and “Jugendstil” comes from. Another form of his inspiration comes from the free party scene. Arjan enjoyed for years going to underground acid parties, festivals and tekknivals. He was inspired by the psychedelic black and white style, as used on many flyers or record labels, so in contrast to a lot of black and white art, he made a very colorful picture disk for Dutch Soundsystem, Acid Anonymous back in 2004.
Music is a real impact on Arjan’s world as well. He is always listening to music and also likes to collect records. As a kid, he also learned how to play the keys on a church organ, just because he loved its sound. Later, he also started composing electronic music on his computer with a keyboard. Ranging from ambient, electronic to Tekkno music.
In the past decade, besides his creative travels, he has worked additionally in a store for him to be able to pay his bills. Arjan started drawing less and less and even came to a point where he no longer enjoyed drawing at all. Until one day, he decided to dedicate daily practice of ten minutes of drawing. Fortunately, this rekindled for him the pleasure of drawing.
In addition, his art truly gained momentum again when he started painting digitally. With a busy work schedule in the shop and being a dad of his two beautiful daughters, it was definitely challenging for him to make more room for the paintings. With the Digital painting technique, he could literally just start to paint right away, wherever he is, without having to make room and get all the art materials ready. His many years of experience in painting with paint come in handy in digital painting as well. He then decided to present his artwork on social media. A new routine of making beautiful things soon emerged, and design inquiries naturally followed.
Since the early of 2021, he started working with Avanyah on digital designs for screen printed garments. Here you can get a pick of the first art clothing of the collaboration between Januz Art and Avanyah Clothing, Gateway and Mycelium, which will be available to purchase in our online shop.
-
New Alternative Clothing Collection
Avanyah created a brand new collection of alternative fashion & unique art-wear. Discover the new designs & the story behind...
-
Interview with Alexander Green aka Kojo Style
Artist interview with Kojo Style of Avanyah Clothing! Everything about Kojo's music, his art, festivals, the Fusion Culture Project & his...
-
Interview with Natan Lenski aka MantisMash
An interview with Mantis Mash that kicks off our new series "Avanyah's Interview Sessions"! Everything about his music, upcoming festivals,..
