Couples in rough stone

Zimbabwe Stone Couples in rough stone Sculpture by Daniel Chidoti

Daniel Chidoti was born in 1980 in Mbare, an impoverished area of Harare. He still lives there with his wife Lucy and their daughter Betty. Daniel's elderly mother and father have also come to live with him. His mother is a kind-natured woman who suffers from high blood pressure. Shona culture does not allow a family member to be turned away in their time of need, so when his sister and her young child came to him for shelter, he accepted them also into his modest home. A deeply religious young man, Daniel spends a fair amount of his spare time reading the bible. His inspiration for this may come from his father, who is an elder at their church. 

Daniel learned to carve with the guidance of his brother, Stanley, who also works as a professional carver. Finding it difficult at first to make ends meet and care for his growing family with the income he earned from his sculpting, Daniel started working full time for a maize storage facility in 2002. In 2003, he returned to carving as a result of the economic chaos in the country shutting down much of the maize industry in Zimbabwe. Carving is still one of the few remaining respected ways in which to earn a living these days. 

Popular for his abstracts and animal sculptures, Daniel work is very well polished and gracefully simplistic. His stone of preference is Black Serpentine.