Sjoerd de Vries was a painter, sculptor, etcher, Illustrator, art teacher and textile artist with Frisian roots. He was born as a son of a baker on November 26, 1909 at Franeker (Franekeradeel) and in 1996 he died in Alkmaar. He was a member of the Arti et Amicitia (art and friendship) in Amsterdam. He worked in Arnhem (1975) and Emmeloord-Noordoostpolder (1983) and after his retirement he lived and worked in Spain for five years (1978-1983). However, due to the many commissions from the Netherlands he and his wife Akke Dijkstra decided to leave Spain and return to the Netherlands, because travelling back and forth became too much. Sjoerd de Vries has never had a shortage of commissions or needed to ask for them. It came to him. The topics that Sjoerd preferred were those of the street scene, the village scene, the church interior and the landscape. In particular the staffage of the Frisian landscapes and beautiful skies continued to amaze him. Especially skies fascinated him and high skies inspired him even. Skies therefore had an important place in his paintings. Sjoerd de Vries was a painter of the Frisian landscape. Although he also created works in Amsterdam (1960-1967) and Spain, where he lived for some time. In Amsterdam, he has had a fruitful time and one of his paintings, the Amsterdamse Dam, hangs in the American Calgary.