Chris Berens was born in 1976 in Oss, Netherlands, near the historic town of 's-Hertogenbosch, the birthplace of Hieronymous Bosch, a factor that would feature in his artistic development.

[1] When he was a boy, his father brought him to many exhibitions of the Dutch Golden Age painters, including Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer, and those images became infused into the internal world he began imagining as a child.

While working as a freelance illustrator, Berens began to teach himself to paint in several dilapidated buildings in the rural area near his childhood home.

[3] Attempting to emulate the painting methods of the Old Masters and 19th-century academic artists like Ingres and Bouguereau, he learned by copying their work, and eventually came upon a technique which allowed him to achieve an otherworldly dreamlike impression of the qualities he admired in his predecessors.

That sold-out show was his first exposure to American collectors, and the sudden appearance of an artist exhibiting his technical sophistication and evocative dreamlike motifs caused a sensation in pop surrealism circles.

[6] He also supplied the artwork for German singer Xavier Naidoo's 2009 album Alles kann besser werden,[7] which features a painting called "The Big Blue."

"[1] This internal universe is painted as if it is being viewed through a distorted lens, which gives the viewer a sense of peering into a secret world, inhabited by mysterious human figures from another age and a menagerie of real and fanciful animals.

In paintings like "In Paradisum," "Circle of Friends," "On a Midnight Voyage" and "First Snow, Guide Me Home," he had explored various facets of the experience of dying,[1] as he believes that there is "a great deal of beauty present in the moment of death.

"[3] While he feels he is not yet capable of depicting what he envisions to its full potential, he says he strives to improve his skills rapidly, because he is driven to bring these visions into reality.

And while the usual assortment of magical animal spirits show up in all the works, another character makes an appearance, Chris' newborn daughter Emma Leeuwenhart Berens.

While these homage paintings often borrow specific elements such as costume and composition, they invariably lift their subjects into a surreal narrative that could never have been conceived by their original creators.

Because the ink remains wet, he is able to work with it for some time – for example, dragging through it with a knife to create fur effects, or using a blow dryer to blur areas into soft focus.