Arjan Winkelaar didn’t enter the world of magic through study or revelation. He entered by doing. By drawing before he knew what the drawing wanted, was asking of him. By following lines that seemed to arrive from somewhere just beyond his reach. By gathering objects that felt strangely charged, as if they told him stories that weren’t yet heard. Over time, he realized that these moments weren’t random – they were doorways he unlocked.

The creative process of Arjan is in it’s core intuitive. A new piece rarely starts with an idea; it starts with a feeling, a pull. It might be an old print found in a thrift shop, a lost scrap lying in a corner of his studio or something he kept without knowing why. When he starts working, the object reveals its own gravity. His hand moves first, the thought catches up later. Dreams merge with imagery, symbols return uninvited and slowly a direction emerges – one Arjan never could have planned.

Arjan Winkelaar is drawn to materials that behold traces of a past life. They come to him with dents, histories, forgotten meanings. Transforming them feels nothing like like creation and more like an excavation: clearing space, layering, scraping away, redrawing, waiting. It’s a process of patience – a quiet negotiation between what the material asks and what the work wants to become. There’s a ritual quality to it, not formal or ceremonial, but woven into the way Arjan focusses, the way intention settles in his fingertips.

The eyes that appear throughout his work reflect that same search for connection. They’re openings, not symbols – a way for the artwork to look back at the viewer. For him, they mark the moments where a piece becomes something more than an object. A point of contact. A presence.

Spiritually, Arjan works theurgically, in dialogue with a wide and shifting constellation of divine forces — deities mostly derived from within the European pantheon. Not to worship, not to rank or separate, but to collaborate. Arjan approaches them as currents rather than figures: energies that shape, guide, provoke or soften. Elements of chaos magic, sigil-work, dream practice and intuitive ritual naturally slip into his process. They’re simply ways to listen more closely to his subconscious mind.

Every artwork is an act of transformation – from found object to talisman, from the mundane to the meaningful. Arjan Winkelaar is not interested in boxing himself into a single style or method. What matters is whether the work reflects to someone in the right place: whether it’s something that quiet shifts inside or something they recognize from memories never lived.

Arjan Winkelaar’s mission is simple: to make the magick surrounding us visible again. Not by inventing new myths, but by revealing the ones already humming in our reality – and inside you. Through drawings, altered objects and an intuitive, ritual-infused approach, Arjan pries open a small crack in the reality of everyday. Just enough for a glimmer to shine through.

In his practice, he is constantly switching roles: maker, guide, witness. Sometimes he shapes the work. Sometimes the work shapes him. Usually, it’s both.