Jan van Hell is a digital/mixed media artist and abstract acrylic painter from Münster in Germany and was born in 1979. His style has mostly been described as minimal abstract and contemporary art. 

In his digital works Van Hell uses photographs, various graphic elements and visual fragments as his “raw material” to then start rearranging, distorting, recreating and abstracting them up to an extent, where the original images or elements are no longer recognizable at all. 

With his background as a self-taught photo editor, photo artist and photographer he always tries to capture a certain emotion and atmosphere in each of his pieces and uses many aspects of those techniques in his creative work.

Since the German artist is suffering from mental health issues, his art is considered as very personal and has become an important, welcome and healing way to deal with and canalize his emotions as his work helps him to settle his thoughts and is leading him to more inner peace and tranquility.

He refers to Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor as being his major influence in almost every aspect of his artistic life since day one, which explicitly includes Reznor’s music and lyrics as well as all visual components like album artworks, live visuals, music videos etc.

That also explains why there’s a strong audiovisual factor in creating his art since van Hell repeatedly stated that he always has a very specific idea of what song/s would match an image or what music he listened to when he created it. Almost like a  soundtrack to each image that guides him to capture and visualize a certain atmosphere and emotion during the whole creative process.