‘Do you still remember the world of your childhood? That world where everything seemed colossal, where monsters lurked in the dark, and wondrous creatures silently accompanied you on your way to school or during every game you played. Where animals still spoke, and you fantasized about their dreams and secrets.’

For most people, that world has become a distant memory, a relic from a time when everything was simple, innocent, and grand, when worries were nothing more than fleeting shadows. But what if I told you that this world never disappeared? That it still lives deep within us, not as a faint echo of lost youth, but as a living entity, hidden behind the veil of adulthood and daily concerns? All the stories you experienced as a child never truly left. The magic within them still pulses through your mind, your soul, your body.

It’s this magical world that I try to capture in my art, especially in my drawings. A return to the stories of the past, intertwined with contemporary comics, mythology, and the surreal images that continuously enchant our imagination. They are echoes of magic, spirituality, and the eternal presence of gods. Each of my drawings is a moment caught in time, a still story captured in lines, shapes, and textures. But it’s not about being a child or how children see the world. It’s about the inherent magic within every story, the enchantment that weaves through our reality, even if we no longer perceive it consciously.

My drawings are portals, small windows into this magical world. They are visual stories, a longing for the scents of forgotten memories and for things you’ve never known before. I don’t just want to remind you of what you’ve lost but also of what you’ve never experienced.

As an artist, as a creator, drawing has always been a part of my being. It’s in my blood, in my hands, in the depths of my DNA. In my earliest memories, I was always drawing, inventing stories with friends—magical stories about ghosts, enchanted animals, and trees that whispered our secrets. Trees we climbed, where we built forts, places where we told new stories, things that could have been real, things that *were* real, simply because we believed in them.

Through my art, I return to that world of magic, to those stories of the past, the present, and everything in between. They are stories that I don’t fully tell for you, but that I want you to experience, so that you can create your own story. I ask you to return to those moments when the magical world was still fully open. My work consists of fragments, isolated scenes, connected by an invisible thread of enchantment, to be discovered again and again, each time in a new way.

My mission is to make the magic that surrounds us visible once more. To show you, me, and even strangers how magic touches us, how it has always surrounded us, and how we’ve never truly lost it. My art is a mirror, a window into the magic that slumbers within you. I want to give that magic back to you, to show its face in the lines of my drawings.

Arjan Winkelaar (b.1971) – Alkmaar, the Netherlands