Wim Roskam, maker of the Akaija & Art

Wim Roskam is a goldsmith, author and maker of the Akaija and related Art (jewellery and paintings). Together with his love Marianne Agterdenbos they are the driving force behind Akaija & Art.

Wim

Wim Roskam was born on June 3, 1960 in Soestdijk, Netherlands.

But let me talk from my own person from here on…
My childhood was great: loving parents, and a sister who for changes didn’t bug me all (well, most :-) of the time. My mother was a teacher and my father was an undertaking person, boldly going where not many had gone before in his time (after the 2nd WW): to the Alps on his bicycle with minimal engine support and for sleeping only a hammock. Nowadays even trained mountainbikers don’t do that kind of stuff.

Stargazing and philosophing about the stars is kind of traditional in our family, because my grandfather had spent many nights in the crow’s nest of the last sailing ships of the Dutch Navy on his way to distant destinations, watching the stars and thinking about them. From him, and from my father I probably inherited the love for the cosmos, so on the wall of my sleeping room I soon had a mural with stars. And thinking about this… their undertaking nature now serves me well to make the Akaija known in the world.

Of course I needed to visit a stellar observatory in Holland and as a small child I asked questions to the man in charge with a serious face as if I was a highly educated specialist in the field. After all I possessed a couple of books on the subject, so…

As soon as I was able to write more or less coherent my first public text was a short paragraph about the dying fish in our dirty rivers. That concerned me and it was to be expected that I would do something about it. So I wrote a ‘book’ about etherical beings protecting nature: mermaids and nymphs inhabiting the streams, the mountains, the seas, the clouds and even a volcano. I guess I had this in mind when I recently wrote my ‘Letter to the Governments‘, a letter that now finds its way through the internet.

It was my wish to become a volcanologist, but my math talents weren’t adaquate. I became a teacher instead, but I didn’t love to stand in front of classes full of bored children, being forced to teach them things I hated myself. But I was good at telling stories, even earning respect of my mentor because I could keep a class quiet for a long time during the story-telling. But in the hours afterwards they released their contained energy…

Space – Where we have gone before

Shortly after this education I met Linda. She too was a teacher, and a remarkable one at that. She had been selected by the students to be their best teacher ever on a school with more than 100 teachers. I couldn’t help not loving to be a teacher, and so I started programming the very first computers. Have you ever heard about the ZX Spectrum… one of the very first home computers? That one started it for me.
But my real passion was painting.

Swimming Diplom

I wanted to be able to paint those unearthly realistic landscapes like you see on covers of science fiction and fantasy magazins. But how did the artist create that in pre-computer days without leaving pencil and brush strokes?

Linda knew the answer: airbrush.

Isis – birthday card

So I bought an airbrush, with which you spray paint using air. Within a year I mastered this technique well enough to contact publishers of birthday and greeting cards. Most of them weren’t interested, but one small company agreed to give it a try and from then on I had a (small) income.

Unlike their usual habit they agreed with a few series of new age and spiritual cards with dolphins, Egyptian motivs and cosmic backgrounds. Of course I made other paintings too, but to be honest… though people liked what I made, they weren’t really enthusiastic about it.

Into the West

Linda’s illness and passing caused me to ‘transform’ somehow. Maybe I needed this experience, because it changed my life, and also myself. Before this, people liked what I made, but I hardly sold anything. Now I can hardly expose my paintings, because they are always sold :-).

Apart from this there’s something else… it seems as if the paintings hold more ‘power’. I know that I’m inspired by Linda and by my guardian angel Amhirez. Together with him, so he said, I have made hieroglyphs and illustrations on walls in Egypt thousands of years ago. ‘They’ add that extra dimension to the paintings through my hands: Love.

And my other grandfather seems to be around too, mainly to point at his watch (not really of course, he doesn’t need that) as if to say: it was 5 o’clock hours ago… shouldn’t you stop?

Some time after Linda’s passing Marianne and I started living together. Our aim is it to help people, and even the Earth, to bring something in the world that harmonises and balances energies, protecting us against weakening forces.

Currently the Akaija is the most important example that does this. But there are many other designs waiting to be materialised.