John Windus is a professional artist and was born in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 1946. He lived in Weesp (a small medieval town bordering Amsterdam) during his formative years. Had his art education in Amsterdam and also lived as an art director in Haarlem for two years. He had two exhibitions by the age of 19 and represented his country in an international student exhibition at the New York Hilton. In 1969 he had an exhibition at the Anne Frank House, which operated downstairs as an International Youth Centre Gallery.

He arrived in Sydney in that same year and befriended the Irish artist Phillip Martin, who after a distinguished career as a Post Modern artist in Europe was also looking for a new horizon in Australia. John participated directly in some group shows that same year, including at the legendary Central Street Gallery.
He met Martin Sharp in 1970 in London and participated in the Yellow House project in Sydney. John won the British Tourist Authority poster/art prize that same year, which gave him the privilege of being the guest of the Lord Mayor of London, as well of Roy Strong (director of the National Portrait Gallery in London) and Ronald Penrose (biographer of Pablo Picasso).

In 1972 he shared an exhibition at the West Street Gallery with the internationally well known Dutch Cobra Group artist Karel Appel. In 1973 he had an exhibition at the University of Sydney and in 1974 with the American artist Sam Middleton in Amsterdam, after being introduced to him by Kym Bonython at whose gallery John had participated in a group show.
Back in Sydney, he became a member of the Liverpool+1 art group, which resulted participating in an exhibition at the Toorak Gallery in Melbourne. In 1978 he had an exhibition at the Hogarth Gallery in Sydney, with the legendary Clive Evatt as director.

John lived in Melbourne from 1981 for about three years, where he had two exhibitions. Back in Sydney he moved into an art studio complex next to Garry Shead, who also had a studio there. Around that time John’s work started to become more lyrical with the Australian landscape as its major subject.Since then there have been many exhibitions, mainly in Sydney. Including the Gates Gallery, Sydney Hilton, Cooks Hill Gallery in Newcastle, the Ensemble Theatre, Mary Place Gallery, The Bowral Art Society Gallery and others. He also participated in many group shows such as The Rembrandt Connection in Melbourne.

He was a winner of the Mosman Centenary Drawing prize in 1993 and of the National Walkom Manning prize in 2003. In 2009 he was invited to be on the judging panel of the first ever Cricket Art Prize, which included the art critic John Mc.Donald. Around that time John became a part time art tutor at a variety of colleges and in 2014 started to work on a new series of paintings, which resulted in an exhibition at the Rex Livingston Gallery in 2018.
In 2021 an art book about his smaller paintings was published called Regardless. Since 2023 he has been working on a brand new series of paintings called Nature and Imagination – exhibition details are not available yet.

His work is represented in corporate collections in Sydney, Amsterdam, London, Brunei and private ones in Amsterdam, Sydney, Connecticut, Melbourne, Newcastle and Singapore.