Erik van der Esch was born in Amsterdam on December 31, 1956 but grew up in nearby Naarden. This Dutch artist started drawing at a young age. After finishing his school he attended the Academie in Utrecht for a year and a half during the mid 1970s. Back then realistic drawing wasn’t much loved and therefore little taught. All true art after all was supposed to be abstract.

At the end of the 1980s Erik van der Esch started painting with pil paint. With Pieter Brueghel as his main source of inspiration, together with Hieronymus Bosch and the works of Willink and Pyke Koch with whom he shares an interest in the painters of the Renaissance.

In the 1990s Van der Esch made illustrations for commercial purposes, book illustrations, visuals and storyboards. He also made portraits in that time. Van der Esch often works in a magical realistic way creating paintings and murals.