...The Forest of Soignes, the green lung of Brussels, has long been Jephan de Villiers' source of inspiration and material. A deep sympathy for forests that have been brutally felled around the world, a sickly childhood spent in the confines of his room with a tree glimpsed through the window as his only horizon, a love of everything that the wind blows away with no hope of return, these emotions and experiences partly explain the artist's special affinity for the detritus of the plant world.

De Villiers is acutely sensitive to his working environment and it seems that a degree of darkness and privacy is an essential condition for the conception of this embryonic world waiting to blossom in the light. Whilst living in London his studio was in a basement, in Brussels it was in an attic, and now in Jolymont it is under the shadow of the trees.