Born at Chapeyama Village Mokosa Mutoko, from a family of eight boys, our parents are Tagara and Ernesteria.

As a kid we used to spend a lot of our time playing with clay – this was the beginning of my interest in art. This was when I started tending to small plots of land for vegetables.When I started school the interest was more on drawing since I was able to read. This was during the comic book era and I was getting more interested in drawing and painting.

Before joining the BAT Workshop, I attended Peter Burgh School of Art, but unfortunately my work could not afford to pay for the fees. This was when I saw an advertisement about the BAT Workshop, of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in 1995-86. I specialised in painting and printmaking. This was before I switched to sculpture, which I am now doing to this day, but I still like to paint.

I participated in the annual exhibition of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe from 1985-91 and in 1988 was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for my piece ‘The Beekeeper’.

The term ‘graphic’ has been described as a key to my character as an artist, as I feel a deep aesthetic kinship to the great artists ‘The San Peoples’, who populated the Zimbabwean Plateau thousands of years ago, leaving their unsurpassable legacy of graphic art scattered over rock faces across Zimbabwe. San rock art, sophisticated in its abstraction and powerful in its minimal statements of the power and grace, vitality and suppleness of animal form, draws me, for I too respond to the grace and vitality of animal being and most particularly of birds.

My birds, etched with minimal line in subtle combinations of stone, wood and metal, extract the essence of ‘birdness’. As they nestle, dart, fly or simply contemplate, they have the assurance of being in perfect harmony with nature’s scheme of things. It is a vision which stirs not only the poetic sense, but brings to mind also the fact that such a world is under threat.

I am a young man in my own perspective and have the courage and individuality to pursue it. To view a video interview with Stanford, visit; http://youtu.be/vf84q1ib58E

Exhibitions to date:

• 1985 Africa Centre, London, England
• 1985 – early 90’s Delta Gallery 85 – to early 90’s
• 1985-93 National Gallery Annual Exhibition, Harare, Zimbabwe
• 1991 Pachipamwe International
• 1992 Solo exhibition, Dendera Gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe
• 1993 Two man exhibition, Sandro’s Gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe
• 1993 Touring exhibition, Finland
• 1993 Galerie Knud Grothe, Copenhagen, Denmark
• 1994 Solo exhibition, Dendera Gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe
• 1994 Galerie Knud Grothe, Copenhagen, Denmark
• 2000 Denmark and several international exhibitions