Visser was born in Amersterdam and immigrated with his family to Canada when he was 11 years old. He traces his interest in art to parents who appreciated it enough to take him to view paintings of all the great Dutch Masters in famous museums throughout Holland. His grandfather was an accomplished artist and Visser was exposed to his talent from an early age. As a child, he sketched constantly and always knew he would be an artist. He attended the Ontario College of Art in Toronto at night while apprenticing at a large art studio that had nearly 100 other artists, all designing and illustrating the Sears Roebuck mail order catalogues. Six years later, he began a freelance career doing fashion illustration and over the years has produced hundreds of paperback book jacket covers–everything from romance to science fiction and westerns. He continued to paint and sell original landscapes on the side. Wildlife art was a natural evolution as he began putting birds and animals into his paintings. Visser travels a lot and always takes his camera to record backgrounds that might appear in future paintings. He prefers to paint the birds and animals of mountainous areas of Western Canada and the United States. He, his wife Dee and their two teenagers live 90 miles north of Toronto where he can see deer, geese, mallards, and an occasional wolf right from his home.