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Donovan Myburgh
CANADA
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"I want each viewer to know they never face their feelings alone."
Hyperrealism first captured Donovan Myburgh as a powerful concept early in his personal art journey. The idea of rendering a snapshot in time with nothing more than a pencil struck him as both audacious and irresistible. On top of that intellectual appeal came the true challenge of the craft: recreating every hair, every wrinkle, and every small imperfection by hand. The combination of these factors sparked a drive within him to create and to test himself against his own abilities. What began as fascination soon became a discipline, and that early spark set the direction for everything he would go on to pursue with the medium.
Pandemic | Graphite
$1,100
"Pandemic" is a piece I started during the pandemic, I wanted to capture the emotions we have all experienced in one single moment. A piece that took 36 hours to create, I want you to see yourself in this. We have all gone through such hard times and often we just want to scream at the top of our lungs. We have lost jobs, lost family, lost friends and I want everyone to know that they are not alone.
Capturing a single moment in time lies at the very heart of his artistic intention. He strives to hold the power of an emotion within one frame, hoping that the feeling will pass directly from the image to the viewer. This is not portraiture for its own sake but an attempt to preserve something fleeting and deeply human. Each drawing becomes a vessel for a particular emotional charge, frozen and made permanent through patient effort. By concentrating such intensity into a single image, he invites the observer to pause and receive what the work carries, experiencing a moment that might otherwise have slipped quietly and unremarkably away.
Gratitude | Graphite
$1,100
I needed to capture gratitude, the moment you realize you are exactly where you are meant to be. To be grateful for everything and everyone you have and know that God has a plan for you.
"Every hair and wrinkle is a challenge I set for myself."
Connection with the viewer forms the emotional core of his practice. He wants those who encounter his work to relate to it, to feel a shared experience with the piece rather than standing apart as distant spectators. Through that sense of recognition, he hopes to remind them that they are not alone in what they feel. His drawings reach toward comfort and validation, offering a quiet acknowledgement of emotions that often go unspoken. This desire to console and affirm gives his art a generous purpose, transforming private feeling into something communal. In the meeting between image and observer, he seeks a moment of genuine human solidarity.
Peace | Graphite
$1,100
"Peace", that moment when you find it is powerful and a stage I hope we all find, a place where you realize that you don't have control of everything around you and have to just be happy to be at peace. I was inspired to draw this after a conversation with a friend after having gone through very tough times, came out stronger.
Self-taught and shaped by his own persistence, Myburgh is a South African artist now living in Canada. His development has come through years of experimentation, a steady process of learning by doing rather than by instruction. Throughout this journey he has nurtured a deep love of creating art with a pencil, choosing to keep his approach as traditional as possible. This commitment to the classical medium reflects both patience and conviction, a refusal to reach for shortcuts. His path demonstrates that mastery can be earned through dedication alone, and that a self-directed education, pursued with enough love and discipline, can yield work of remarkable depth and technical sophistication.
A feeling of pure frustration, to scream at the top of your lungs and not be heard, A cry for help that falls on deaf ears.. many of us have experienced this and I hope to let others know, that they are not alone. This also speaks of today's world where we no longer see everyone's faces, we just see the eyes hidden behind masks. I look forward to seeing the. smiles on people's faces again!
Silence | Graphite
$1,000
"Drawing a portrait feels like slowly getting to know a character across the pages of a novel, until I know them deeply."
"If my imagery leaves you uneasy, I take that as a quiet sign of connection rather than failure; discomfort often means the work has awakened something real, recognising a feeling you carry but have not yet spoken aloud, and that recognition is the whole reason I create."
Antlers One | Graphite
$1,100
A piece close to my heart, starting this series arguably is what drove me to pursue art as a career. A powerful piece that says so much but is up for interpretation by the viewer. There are themes of strength juxtaposed with weakness, comfort juxtaposed with discomfort, and a truly beautiful story.
Reverence for the original masters has profoundly shaped his understanding of his craft. Studying figures such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, he absorbed the nuances behind the human form and carried those lessons into his own work. This dialogue with tradition grounds his practice in centuries of accumulated knowledge, connecting his contemporary drawings to a long artistic lineage. Rather than imitating the past, he draws wisdom from it, letting the insights of the masters inform his personal vision. That grounding gives his figures their anatomical truth and quiet authority, evidence of an artist who has learned deeply from those who came before him.
Antlers Two | Graphite
$1,100
This is a powerful piece and I want the viewers to find their own meaning in this piece, there is a sense of vulnerability and empowerment that speaks volumes.
Something quite spectacular happens within him when pencil meets paper, an experience he describes as an endless world to discover. In that moment of contact, the act of drawing becomes more than technique; it becomes a form of exploration and revelation. The blank page opens into possibility, and each mark carries him further into territory he cannot fully anticipate. This sense of discovery keeps his practice alive and endlessly renewing, never reducing to mere repetition. For Myburgh, the intimate meeting of tool and surface holds a kind of quiet magic, a doorway into creative depths that continue to surprise and sustain him with every new work.
"Lefty" is a drawing of my own left hand, the hand I draw with, the hand I create with. Capturing my own hand at the age of 29 at the time, I decided to immortalize it in time, and at 70 I want to recreate this with my hand then.
Lefty | Graphite
$900
Creating an artwork, for him, resembles reading a good book. It begins with learning and understanding the main character, and as the story develops and that character grows, the artist grows and learns alongside them. By the time the final page is reached, there is a sense of knowing the subject deeply, of having shared a genuine journey together. This narrative understanding of his process reveals how personal and immersive his drawing truly is. Each portrait becomes a relationship unfolding over time, not a static exercise but a lived encounter. The finished work carries the trace of that intimacy, the residue of hours spent in close company.
"The instant graphite touches the page, an endless world opens before me."
Truth, rather than darkness, is how he understands the character of his work. Some have described his art as dark, yet he sees it differently, as an honest reckoning with what is real. He does not shy away from difficult emotion or uncomfortable resonance, believing that authenticity matters more than reassurance. Where others perceive shadow, he perceives candour, a willingness to show life as it genuinely feels rather than as one might prefer it to appear. This commitment to truth gives his images their weight and their integrity, and it separates his vision from any easy or merely decorative account of the human condition.
Mask | Graphite
$900
"Mask" was a way to push boundaries, I sought out to do something different from my norm and this was the outcome! The face behind the mask is truly just a playful piece with a touch of paint.
Unease, when it arises in a viewer, is something he regards as meaningful rather than unwelcome. If a person feels conflicted or uncomfortable before his imagery, he suspects it may be because the work is awakening something and quietly relating to them on a deeper level. That discomfort, in his view, is not a failure but a sign of contact, evidence that the piece has touched a real and living nerve. He does not seek to soothe every response into ease. Instead, he trusts that genuine art sometimes disturbs precisely because it recognises the viewer, reflecting back feelings not yet fully acknowledged.
"Trunk" is a piece that is close to my heart, being born in South Africa, you are always close to the bush veld where you are around these spectacular animals and I wanted to capture that in a drawing that was more then just a portrait, I wanted to capture that wild wonder. Having been chased by an elephant once, I will forever have true respect for this beautiful animal.
Trunk | Graphite
$950
Provoking conversation, even the silent kind, stands as the ultimate purpose behind his art. Whether the dialogue unfolds between people or entirely within a single viewer's mind, he hopes his work will spark reflection and response. This ambition gives his hyperrealism a reason beyond technical brilliance, rooting it in the desire to move and to matter. Every meticulously rendered hair and wrinkle serves this larger aim, drawing the observer into an encounter that lingers. For Myburgh, success is measured not merely by likeness achieved but by feeling stirred, by the quiet internal conversations his images set in motion long after the viewer has walked away.
Calla Lily | Graphite
$950
I wanted to challenge myself and experiment, I wanted to know that I could do realism outside of people and portraits so I decided to go organic with these Calla Lilies. I hope to add to this and create a triptych out of these.
"Some call my work dark, but I have always called it truth."
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