Affinity

Since my earliest memories, I shared a deep affinity for animals. As a child, I would often spend hours or days role-playing as a deer or a horse. I have finally come to realise the importance of my childhood obsession with thinking, living and feeling like an animal. Through it I laid a foundational respect for all life and an understanding of how deeply we are connected to both the natural and the unseen worlds around us.

This painting also represents the cyclical nature of our human existence. Death and rebirth, joy and sorrow, these cycles sculpt us into the beings we have come here to be. I have found that only through surrender to the divine, unconditional love for self and other living beings can we learn to embrace these inevitable cycles of life. As conscious creators of our own reality, we are reminded that each perceived ‘high’ and ‘low’ is but one dimension of the same truth. All expands us, all shapes that which we become, all is essential.

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Natasha Zraikat is a multi award-winning magical realism artist. She was born in the USA to Jordanian-Palestinian and Russian-Ukrainian parents, soon after migrating to Australia with her family as a child.

Natasha is fascinated with the seen and unseen worlds and how the two interconnect. Her current body of work describes her own journey of spiritual growth and awakening. This has been one of the most difficult yet rewarding experiences of her life so far, and she felt called on a soul level to pour this experience into her work and to share it with complete honesty.

‘To me, art is a portal to unseen worlds – an expression of the divine essence within each of us’ she explains. ‘The universe is indeed within us, and what we cultivate within is reflected without – in our physical reality. As our world shifts, both on Earth and in the heavens, many of us can perceive a pulling back of the ‘veil’ of the physical world as we know it.’ says Natasha.

In 2025, Natasha recently appeared as a contestant on Portrait Artist of the Year Australia, now showing on ABC TV Australia and also won the 2025 Dean Cogle Portrait Prize. She also won First Prize in the City-Wide Art VIII Competition in Florence, Italy. Her work has been collected and exhibited across Australia, the USA and Europe, and has been featured in multiple publications including Beautiful Bizarre magazine.