Zaide’s paintings pulse with urgency and reflect a lived experience shaped by personal and political dimensions of identity, disability, and transformation. The palette knife is their tool of choice, used to expel vast quantities of paint onto canvas in a visceral act of making. These heavily worked surfaces ripple with movement, offering viewers not just images but physical records of emotion and exertion.
A diagnosis of Huntington’s Disease and a lifelong engagement with the disability support community deeply inform the artists practice. Their paintings are shaped by both the embodied experience of neurodegeneration and the personal history of caring for affected family members. This layered perspective rejects fear-based narratives around disability and instead affirms complexity, power, and grace. Paint becomes movement, resistance, and memory. Its undulating texture reflects both the artist’s chorea-affected gestures and the emotional terrain of their lived reality. Every mark is imbued with defiance, vulnerability, and intent.
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CV
Hornsby Art Prize - Finalist
September 2025, Hornsby Art Centre
National Emerging Art Prize - Finalist
October 2024, Michael Reid, Garden Gallery Botanical Gardens
Clayton Utz Art Award - Finalist
October 2024, Lethbridge Gallery
Brisbane Portrait Prize - Salon Des Refusals
September 2024, Royal Queensland Art Society, Petrie Terrace Gallery
Merivale St Studio & Gallery - Residency
2024, Merivale Street, South Brisbane
Queensland Figurative Prize, Finalist
August 2022, Royal Queensland Art Society, Petrie Terrace Gallery
Brisbane Portrait Prize - Salon de refuses
October 2021, Royal Queensland Art Society, Petrie Terrace Gallery
Dean Cogle Portrait Prize - Finalist
August 2021, Dust Temple, Currumbin
HarkerHine Art Award - Highly Commended
July 2021, Bond Street, West End
Lethbridge 20,000 Small Scale Art Award - Finalist
June 2021, Lethbridge Gallery, Paddington
Visible Project
November 2020 Online exhibition at -
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