Kees Buurman was born in 1933 in Leiden, where his father had a printing business. As an intended successor, he therefore followed the training to become director/manager in the graphics company and became proficient in all graphic techniques, organization and art history at the Graphic School in Amsterdam (1951-1954).

Later he attended the third year at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (1958-1959), while he established himself as a visual artist in Leiden. His work developed from figurative in the beginning, gradually through a more expressionistic form to geometric abstract in black and white. In Japanese culture he found elements with which he had been occupied for years: the emptiness, the essence of black and white, the immaterial, the connection between art and religion.

He combined his work as a free visual artist with that as a teacher of visual arts - and from 1970 also as coordinator of all creative courses - at the Leiden People's University (1961-1978), at the Academy of Visual Arts in Rotterdam (circa 1965), at the Minerva Academy in Groningen (1980-1981) and at the Constantijn Huygens Christian University of the Arts in Kampen (1979-1986).

He lived in Leiden where he was a member of the Leiden Painting and Drawing Society Ars Aemula Naturae. He was also a member of the Association of Visual Artists 'Buut 110' and the Professional Association of Visual Artists (BBK).