The Water Sustains Me Without Even Trying

Zayä works primarily as a tattoo artist, with a background in Fine Art and a blossoming music career alongside her visual practice. She studied at Chelsea College of Art in London.

Her Fine Art practice has long centred on the female form and its relationship with nature. Since becoming a mother, Zayä has developed a deeper sense of awe for the female form, embracing its strength, softness and resilience.
Her nude figurative works sit naturally alongside more abstract and minimalist pieces, each exploring shared feelings of femininity and a quiet harmony with nature. These works allow space for freedom within a ‘flow state’ — a process that brings calm, presence, and grounding to her creative practice as a busy mother.

For over a decade, Zayä’s tattoo practice appeared to exist in contrast to this painterly approach, characterised by fine-line precision, delicacy, and detail.

Through her recent tattoo series, Bodies in Bloom, this perceived divide has begun to dissolve. By free handing large-scale botanical compositions directly onto the body, her tattoo and Fine Art practices now speak to one another, revealing shared themes of nature, embodiment, and femininity. This work has been deeply liberating, allowing Zayä to use her platform to celebrate bodies in their natural form and create a space for women to feel seen. 

She has even begun using magnum shader needles to outline her larger tattoo pieces, creating inky, fluid marks that echo the sweeping lines of a large flat paintbrush - therefore translating the rhythm and flow of her paintings directly onto the body.

She lives and works in Brighton, UK, with her two children. She is owner of a thriving warehouse studio in the North Laines, home to many artistic ventures including tattooing, painting, live music and life drawing.