The Darkness

This painting has thick, painted gallery edges, so hangs beautifully without a frame.

Sister painting to ‘The Light’, this work translates the feeling of sinking into a deep darkness within. Moments of such deep despair, one completely loses any sense of the world around them. Life seems to stand still as the subject falls deep into her own void within. There is light surrounding her darkness, yet in this moment she has no awareness of its existence, nor can she appreciate the depth and mysterious beauty of the dark night that enshrouds her. Despite being divinely supported by all aspects in this moment, she sees only her pain.

The Darkness and The Light were inspired by the sudden, dramatic fluctuations I experienced while moving through a Dark Night of the Soul, especially when I was emerging out of the worst of it.The polarity between them was overwhelming. I marvelled at how I could wake up in one state of being and go to sleep feeling like a completely different person. Like an inner pendulum, these swings allowed me to reflect deeply on both the light and dark aspects of our human perception. Being so immersed in one can completely inhibit your ability to perceive the other in that moment.

In both pieces, the figure appears to be completely immersed in the aspect that consumes her. She opens her heart to receive the light, and falls into deep despair within the dark, however the entities that engulf her are neither good nor bad. They are but two aspects of the same whole. Both equally essential, both equally beautiful, both supporting her divinely.

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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.