Driaan was born in Johannesburg in 1991 and trained first in 3D animation, and it still shows in how precise his forms are. He apprenticed with Otto du Plessis at Bronze Age Foundry, learning to cast in bronze long before he understood how much feeling could sit inside a material. In 2015 he opened his own studio, Reticence, and began making work that reads like a kind of confession. He works in bronze, wood, wire, brass, copper and ceramic, and the material changes with the mood of the piece.

One process runs through much of his recent work. Driaan grows copper crystals through controlled electrolysis, letting the metal branch and spread into shapes that look more grown than made. It is the one part of his process where he sets the conditions, then waits. Current and chemistry finish what his hands started, and the result folds organic growth into a material that has no business looking alive. Ceramic has become just as central to his work, glazed in black, beige and terracotta, closer to skin tone than decoration. Many of his recent pieces carry small, honest titles, as if clay and bronze were somewhere safe to admit something first.

In 2023 he worked with fellow sculptor Catherine Ash on Emergent Properties, shown at Nirox Sculpture Park after a residency at the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture. A later residency at Quartier am Hafen in Cologne produced a body of work called Digital Nomad Revolution, built on the same pull between old craft and new tools that has run through his work since art school. He has shown at Design Miami, PAD London and Intersect Chicago, and in 2025 became the first recipient of the Tyburn Foundation's Affiliated Fellowship at Civitella Ranieri.

We often visit Driaan's studio on the Creative Cape Town Tour, one stop among several where guests meet a maker mid thought, not mid explanation, surrounded by the real mess and order of how the work gets made.