For Wynand van Niekerk, home was not always a place he could easily point to.
Born and raised in South Africa, van Niekerk eventually moved to Toronto after an opportunity with a Canadian company brought him to the country. Years later, another opportunity brought him east to Halifax. There, surrounded by the coastline, historic streets, and the maritime charm of Nova Scotia, something clicked.
“I always wanted to live next to the ocean and never had the chance back in South Africa,” says van Niekerk. “When I got to Halifax, I knew I had found home.”
That sense of belonging has since become central to his work as the artist behind Downtown Sketcher, a creative project that transforms recognizable Canadian places into detailed, hand-drawn illustrations.
What began largely as doodling evolved into a growing artistic endeavour after van Niekerk arrived in Halifax.
He had always drawn, recalling that even as a young child his talent was apparent. At one point, a teacher suggested he might eventually become an architect.
But Halifax gave his sketches a new purpose.
“I think it’s always been there,” he says of his passion for art. “Most of my life [I’ve] been doodling.”
After moving to Nova Scotia, van Niekerk began noticing something different about the places around him. Every building, coastline and public space seemed to carry a story.
“There’s just so many things to see and sketch up,” he says.
His background in photography also influenced the direction of his work. Van Niekerk says there came a point where photography could not quite capture everything he wanted to communicate about a place. After watching an online demonstration about sketching with markers, he began teaching himself new techniques and experimenting with the medium.
What started as personal creative exploration quickly became commercial. Van Niekerk now turns his illustrations into prints, greeting cards, Christmas cards, coasters, tote bags, magnets and miniature luxury puzzles, with his work distributed through wholesalers across Canada. His work has also been stocked by organizations and retailers in Nova Scotia, including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
This traction got him noticed by Royale, leading him to one of his most visible projects to date. It all began with a simple question: What feels like home to you?
That was the brief given to van Niekerk when Royale approached him as one of five Canadian artists selected to create artwork for the brand’s limited-edition Canadian Artist Collection.
For van Niekerk, the answer was deeply personal.
Royale commissioned him to create two sketches representing Halifax and Nova Scotia: The Public Gardens and Peggy’s Cove.
“If it had only been one, it probably would have been the waterfront,” he says. “But having two let me do both of these.”
Peggy’s Cove represents the connection to the ocean that helped make Halifax feel like home in the first place. But van Niekerk did not want the iconic lighthouse to become the entire story.
Instead, he focused first on the community surrounding it.
For him, Peggy’s Cove is a working fishing village before it is a postcard.
“When you see the box on the side, you see only the village,” he explains. “And then when you buy the box and you put it down, you see the lighthouse that’s on top of the box.”
The design was intentional, the village comes first, while the lighthouse reveals itself as part of the larger scene.
His second sketch, the Halifax Public Gardens.
He describes them as one of those rare places where you can step into the middle of the city and suddenly feel removed from it. The noise of Halifax seems to disappear, replaced by greenery, water and a sense of calm.
That feeling mirrors life at home for van Niekerk.
His house backs onto a small green space, and during the summer, he says, he and his family can spend endless hours on the deck with a fire burning, a miniature puzzle on the table and conversations about whatever comes next.
For an immigrant who has lived in different parts of Canada, the idea of defining home can be complicated. South Africa is where van Niekerk grew up. Toronto was an important part of his Canadian journey. Halifax, however, became something different.
It became the place he chose to represent.
That story is particularly meaningful in a country where immigration has played an increasingly important role in shaping communities. According to Statistics Canada, more than 8.3 million people, or 23 per cent of Canada’s population, were or had been landed immigrants or permanent residents in the 2021 Census, the highest proportion among G7 countries.
Van Niekerk’s story offers a smaller, more personal reflection of that broader Canadian experience. Sometimes home is where you were born, but sometimes it is the place where you finally recognize yourself.
And for him, Halifax offered that recognition through its relationship with the ocean, its neighbourhoods and the everyday places that gradually became familiar.
The Royale Canadian Artist Collection has turned van Niekerk’s illustrations into part of an everyday household object, bringing his interpretation of Nova Scotia into homes across the country. Royale’s collection features five Canadian artists and eight limited-edition designs, with van Niekerk representing Nova Scotia through his two Halifax-area works. The company describes the collection as an exploration of the beauty of home, with each artist offering a personal interpretation of the Canadian places and communities that shape them.
For a boy who grew up in South Africa, moved across the country to Toronto and eventually found himself beside the Atlantic Ocean in Halifax, van Niekerk has found a way to put that journey on paper.
