Jo en Josie

A unique path, a unique style.

Jo Debije paints, he cannot live without it.

At the age of 4, he was so absorbed in drawing witches and wild animals that he was frightened by his own shadow. When he was 13, his brother, aged 16, died in an accident. Drawing and painting raised him out of the harsh daily life. He wanted to attend art school, but his parents didn’t see any merit in that. Instead of following his inner urge, he started studying occupational therapy. Painting remained his great passion and in his spare time he was found among canvases, paint, brushes and markers. As a group leader in a children's home, a market vendor and a coach in the commercial sector, he fully participated in mainstream life. In his thirties, the tide turned: in the crisis of bankruptcy, divorce and a fire, his productive painting years began. He immersed himself in painter after painter and studied everything he could discover about his great examples. What steps did De Kooning, Rothko, Richter take? How did they work, how did they make their paint, how did they develop?

His inspiration grows with him. In his thirties, the search for the primal is his quest. What is driving the people? How to find your way in life? In his forties he is concerned with status, his role in society. After the age of fifty, he increasingly started working from silence within and turns his focus on joy and warmth. "Despite the heaviness that sometimes comes with life, I want to show that beauty, colors and love prevail.”

Over the last eleven years, "I make paintings" has been transformed into "we make paintings".

Josie Arnoys: “already in kindergarten the teacher wanted to have my drawings." She draws on everything; in notebooks, covers and books, on tests and the inside of her violin case. She passes her pre-university education final exam including art history and drawing lessons and a study other than the art academy does not even occur to her. At that time Dutch Government encouraged girls to be able to provide for their own maintenance. This made her choose graphic- and typographic design "because I do want to earn a living by myself". She applies for admission at three academies and is accepted at all three. She chooses the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

After graduating in 1992, she specialized in ‘Image and Media Technology’ at the Utrecht University of the Arts. During her exam period she gets invited by the art director of RTL: "we’ve got your thesis here, come and talk". That thesis is about the graphic design of television programs and immediately provided her a job as a designer for dutch television. Aside that, she worked as a part-time teacher at the HKU for 8 years. 12 years onward, she was invited to become an art director herself. With that contract in her pocket, she realizes that it is time to leave the rat race. "One of the best choices in my life." She started working as an independent designer - and then Jo and Josie's paths crossed.

As husband and wife, yin and yang, they lived and worked together for 11 years. Nowadays each at their own place, and together in their gallery in Bergen op Zoom. "Jo and I complement each other perfectly. He works with a lot of power, I am more subdued. He can quickly draw lines and create a basis. I tend to work from an art appreciation: the details and the balance, refinement. He has an infinite imagination while, for example, I can easily sketch a recognizable bird." Mix their qualities and a Jo & Josie is created: a recognizable style due to the many layers, the relief and use of color.

"Art is about the meaning of existence. Connection is a common thread in our work. Connection between the large and the small. Between inside and outside. Between the viewer and the artist. Everything comes together."