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.

"After Nature" (*) was a provocative group of painters. At first they painted in the fields transported by horses; a very romantic scene. "People would find it very old-fashioned but how can something done by young people be old-fashioned?" Later on they would travel around the world to explore their vision on painting.They visited big cities like New York where they would be living and working for some time.

(*): "After Nature" consisted of : Jurriaan van Hall, Peter Klashorst, Bart Domburg. Later, Gijs Donker, Aad Donker, Just Donker and Ernst Voss joined.

At an opening of one of their exhibitions, visitors thaught the group was pulling a joke on them; the gallery was empty; white walls, white canvasses. It was not until the opening itself, that they would start to paint; being nude, wearing wooden shoes, painting nude models, self portraits.

People were shocked.The group would stay in a gallery for weeks, leaving beer cans and pizza cartons as a lively background of the street scenes they painted. At the end of such a stay, a diary of images was completed, consisting of hundreds of paintings.

In 1993, the "After Nature" -group broke up. Jurriaan did not feel like painting anymore and started computer art. "I made real depressing works: diseases with strange eruptions on people's faces; mostly my own. Well, it was a very depressing period, because in the same year, the war in Bosnia started.

Besides my love for the computer at that time, I worked on my computer day and night, I felt I had to make a political statement about the Bosnian war; I sewed anti-war-texts on my clothes and wore them in the streets; I really wanted to make a difference and encourage people to think about it. I would even curse out loud. When the war stopped, I stopped doing this. Today's news is yesterday's history; it does not have the same meaning the next day."

Another change in Jurriaan's life took place after the birth of his first son. "I really had to get used to being a father; it changed my life. I could not live on a day-to-day basis anymore. Everything had to be structured. It felt like I had lost my youth; on the other hand I regained youth, but in another perspective."

In 1995, Jurriaan said goodbye to his computer and started painting again. He developped a new style, sort of influenced by the computer. He started painting his models in small dots of paint, like a computer screen is built up of digital dots.

"When I started painting again, I sometimes got very emotional, at first I even cried, because I sensed a indefinable bond between myself and my work. It is not easy for me to explain my exact feelings but it sort of felt like a recognition; I "saw" myself in my paintings through the movement of my hand painting it.

Painting, I believe, is the most personal thing one can do". Mostly, Jurriaan uses "people" as his subject; he paints after his wife, himself, his sons, friends. Jurriaan is very interested in people and in life itself. "For me, a painting is a praise to life....."