Bio of Evert Job Klijn (3-3-1961)



For me living in The Netherlands during the '80s were rather monotonous, mondane and with a frustrating regulation overkill: an education chosen more out of desperation then interest and which was leading me nowhere (Teacher Trainings College), and employment without any moral etiquette (acquisition by telephone) or just for financial needs (barman). Ideas to try to do something different were almost immediately killed off by a list of required licences, papers and regulations.
 
The idea of living on an island, or at least to be able to live with a relative sense of adventure, was born out of a period in my youth where I lived with my family for 3 years in Curacau, a small island in the Carribean. Yearly holidays on the Isle of Vlieland north of Holland and my life on a renovated, rather isolated, farm in Lochem reinforced my 'Island Dream'.
 
So it was not a surprise to myself and my family, after I saw some photographs of New Zealand, that the perfect solution for my personal 'stasis' was to emigrate. There was an enormous attraction in living as far as you possibly can from Holland, without that 'safety net' of family and friends.

(foto: Job looking for drift wood for his art on the beaches of the Abel Tasman Sea)

 
The lack of regulations (a little like 'The American Dream' wherein anyone whitout too much trouble can start his /her own enterprise) in New Zealand made it possible for me to do and create things of which i could only dream about in The Netherlands and without the financial cost and the required permits and diplomas.
 
Having worked for more then 10 years in the television- and advertising world (in my own successful company) I decided I had enough of the pressure and the constant importance of the commercial aspects over the creative processes.
 
Today I work in a yoghurt factory with enough spare time to endulge myself in my creativity which thankfully still knows enough uncertainty to not make it a full time hobby or even profession. My wife and myself are hoping to build our own eco friendly and energy independant home in a few years, somewhere in the 'bush' in New Zealand, but not before both our children have flown our current nest.