Mahufe: An extraordinary artist

hands, eyes and heart create, see and experience life more intensely and vividly than your average artist.
For him life is transmuted through a brilliant palette of colours, a vivid imagination, sharp intuition and academic brilliance. In Shepherd’s hands paint becomes flesh, pliable, tangible and life-like, he gives paint a voice.
This writer examined one of his recent works “The Caucus of Totems” (2011), currently on display at Gallery Delta. Here the artist delves into a phantasmagoric allegories and metaphors of depicting people and their natural environment according to Shona anthology.
Says Shepherd: “In the city, there are zebras, ‘vayera mbizi’, monkeys ‘vayera soko’, lions ‘vayera shumba’, elephants’ vayera shamanyanga’, et al, urbanised in pinstriped designer suits hustling to get the better of each other.”
He says people are no different to animals – both deal with the laws of survival of the fittest or quickest.
Apart from painting satirical social allegories with acid wit, he is equally known for his sensitive rural and suburban portrayals of women at work and his animated still-lives exemplary in works such as “The Butcher”. His works are reminiscent of Austrian painter, social critic and playwright Oskar Kokoschka’s (1886-1980) un-idealised recordings of contemporary life.
Like Koloschka, Shepherd’s approach to painting is emotive expressionist and his paints have an extra-ordinary feeling of tactility and spontaneous movement.
Shepherd’s colourful critiques of suburban life, rural life, wildlife, culture and human psychology breaths life onto the canvas and paper he works on. He is also a superb draughtsman with the ability to see his subject from penetrating angles.
His oblique angle of vision and bold translation of human society and everyday objects is witty, original and unequivocally Zimbabwean in style, content and context.
Away from art, Mahufe is an athletic rugby player, a great dancer and a jovial spirited human being. His personality is endearing, he is perceptive, sensitive, ambitious and optimistic at all times. Personally, it is always a joy for this writer to share jokes and have the occasional intense discussions on the ways of art today.
Mahufe’s colourful palette speaks and dances the pulse of life itself. He says “my voice is in the joy and colours of life”.
He is represented by Gallery Delta.