Jan Wyers was born at Emmer in the Netherlands in 1888 and emigrated with three friends to the United States in 1913, where he spent three years throughout the North and South Dakotas as a hired hand and with threshing crews. He eventually came to Canada, settling down on a quarter section near Windthorst, Saskatchewan.

It was not until the winter of 1937-38 that Wyers began to paint. At his first exhibition in 1956, the Saskatchewan Arts Board's 7th Annual Saskatchewan Art Exhibition, he received an Award of Merit for a work entitled "The First Saskatchewan Harvest." He also had eight paintings shown at the 1959 National Gallery of Canada exhibition entitled "Folk Painters of the Canadian West. Suffering from Parkinson's he moved into a nursing home in 1970 where he died July 4th, 1973.