Let me introduce myself Dutch/Nederlands
My name is Frans Oonk. I'm 36 years old, I have a lovely wife, two sweet daughters and I have two sisters. I was born on the 12th of March in 1977 in Zutphen, the Netherlands. In the house where I would live for the next 23 years. Overall I have had a careless youth, as long as I can remember I love to draw. The first thing I loved to draw was fighting jets, till I was 10. A good friend of mine told me that his uncle did draw and design cars. That day we decided to create our own car-brand "Pjeu Feau", the name was a combination of the initials of my friend and me together with a french twist to it. We also designed a logo for our brand. From that day on the only thing I wanted to draw were cars. After a few years I noticed that my friend didn't want to draw cars no more, he told me that he lost interest. I always kept the drive to go on and want to become a better drawer of cars.
In those years I had a few designers that inspired me most, Sergio Pininfarina was by far the best in my opinion. The Ferrari Testarossa was thé most extreme car at that time and inspired most designers. Like Michael Jackson is to music, Sergio Pininfarina is to car design. Bertone was the other designer that gave me a lot of inspiration. The difference between the two designers was that Pininfarina's designed cars in a way of making a symphony, clasical and Bertone was creating cars more like techno music, futuristic. Both ways of design I really like. When I see a beautiful design my heart will beat faster and my hands start to tingle, I just have to draw...
I always wanted to become the best car designer there will be, the thing I realized through the years is that the choices I had made were a very important reason why I didn't make progression in my dream. I had my focus a lot on drawing and designing, but was afraid of taking the step to fulfill my dream, it was part insecurity and part of being opinionated. An other part that influenced most choices was my intuition. When I had the feeling it wasn't the wright thing to do, I could make a 180 degrees turn and do the opposite. Life is a learning ground...
In my personal life things were changing, a year before I entered a creative education my father became ill, when I had just begun at the education my father past away when I was 18 years old. It was difficult but I felt I had to go on and did not allow myself to stand still. It had its influence on my performance, not in the beginning but a few years later in my 2nd, 3rd and 4th year. The death of my father gave me an other awareness of life, the things that where important weren't that important any more. I lost a bit of drive in my enthusiasm. When I finished the education successful after four years, I did step away from the creative sector at all. I searched for any job, I needed time to over think what I want to do with my life. After working as an order picker for five months my sister advised me to apply for a job at a car rental company where she also was working for. I took her advice and applied. I've made the decision for myself to work there for 1,5 years. I thought that it would be easy to step back into the creative sector, after the 1,5 years I realized it was not that easy. I enjoyed my work at the car rental and decided to stay there. I still work at the company, but what I have always been doing next to my job is sketching and designing cars, of course.
When I was 25 years old, 7 years after my father had past away, my mother past away also. Those life experiences have a great impact on everyone who are close to the situation. It is never easy and a lot of different feelings and emotions take you over. Time will heal all wounds, I know it does. The hardest part is to find new goals in life, this may take some time. If your reading this and you are in a tough situation like this, keep the faith and give yourself the time to recover. There will come a day when your are going to see the sun shining again and appreciate it more and deeper then before.
Two years ago I decided to do more with the talent I have been given. I want to show my work to the world to let people enjoy, experience and inspire. It would be great to be an inspiration for you and give you the possibility to become aware of the beautiful things you can do to bring happiness into your life and others in your own way.
So take your time while you visit the other pages of the website and enjoy, experience it and be inspired. Thank you for your interest.
With kind regards,
Frans Oonk
