Els Cools was born in Belgium in 1966 and has studied illustration at Sint-Luscapaviljoen and the Academy of Antwerpen and the Academy of Bratislava in Slovakia. She moved to Denmark in 1992 where she lives together with her husband, Oliver Streich, who is also an illustrator.

Cools’ style can be described as a kind of surreal realism for it is in the grotesque, in the absurd and in the surreal that the almost painful realism is hidden.