david filer

david was born in zimbabwe in 1986, and after achieving an honors degree in information design at the university of pretoria in 2008, began drawing full time in the highly competitive and somewhat precarious field of wildlife art. for as long as he can remember he has had a deep fascination and empathy for animals - "i could spend hours just sitting and watching a single creature.

it is not just their beauty and shape that grabs me, but their every move, the smallest tilt of their head, even the slightest shifting of their weight - but most of all, it's their eyes; it is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul - could this be more evident than in the wandering gaze of a giraffe or the primal stare of a pangolin.

every single report card he ever had has, at some point, included the phrase ' day dreams far too often'.

in a way, he believes that this is actually a huge contributing factor in his work; from the smallest dung beetle to the lumbering elephants, every animal becomes a character, a personality, each interlinking with the last.

as strange as this sounds, herein lies the problem in selling his work, to him they are no longer just drawings but projections of my very imagination. in terms of what inspires him, it's quite difficult to pinpoint one exact thing, but rather a single moment that triggers a response - be it a moment in the wild, a song, or in the case of my most sentimental drawing; a dream.

he has dabbled in all mediums but have settled on graphite pencil as he finds that when reduced to black and white, you strip the subject matter down to its basic shades and are left with an intense, powerful piece of art. when portraying the true beauty of wildlife, you often find variety of textures in one subject, from the silky smoothness of an elephants tusk, to the almost granulated leather covering his trunk. as a result, the highest quality fabriano paper is used and carefully fixed to preserve the tiniest of details.

we are happy to consider commission requests – please ask us for a quote

*please note all prices on manZArt website excludes 15% vat for export purposes, 15% vat will be added during check out process should delivery take place within south africa*