Jurriaan started painting at the age of 8. "I was a hyperactive child, always busy doing something. I could not concentrate at school which caused a lot of problems. Therefore, the school board advised my parents to keep me at home in the afternoons. That is when I started to make paintings which I sold at the flee market". However, Jurriaan was more into music. He started playing the cello and the base-guitar. "At the age of 11, I formed a pop group with some friends. We would tour all over Holland."

Later on, Jurriaan re-discovered painting and applied for the Rietveld Academy (for visual arts) in Amsterdam. After graduation, Jurriaan mainly painted abstract works. A few years later, in 1989, he wanted to paint in a more realistic way, "back to the basics", so he says. He started painting "pots and pans", but he wanted more. In a way, he felt standing alone; those days it was not really fashionable to paint the way 17th century masters did. One day he read an interview in which the Dutch artist Peter Klashorst expressed having the same idea: painting after nature.He contacted Klashorst, who shared a studio with friend and collegue Bart Domburg, and went for a visit to their studio. There, "After Nature" was born.