About

Dide, pronounced like Didé or D-Day, is an award-winning painter, poet and composer-soprano-violinist. She was selected for the National Portrait Gallery Herbert Freehills Award exhibition, twice selected by the Royal Society of British Artists as a Rising Star, won the Society of Women Artists Young Artist Award and an International Tera Varna Talent Prize, was selected for the Women in Art Prize exhibition and longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize, and won the W&A Curator Award and the Drake Arts Award, among others. She was Art on a Postcard’s 10 highest-selling artists for International Women’s Day, and has exhibited nationally – at Messums, the Mall Galleries, the Roundhouse, the Bomb Factory, York Art Gallery and Gallery Holt – and internationally in Venice Italy and Sapporo Japan. She started teaching herself how to paint during a covid pandemic lockdown. She is open to commissions and collaborations. Her books (Growing, Broken Sleep Books, 2022, https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/dide-growing, and Making Sense, Verve Poetry Press, 2023, https://vervepoetrypress.com/product/dide-making-sense/?v=79cba1185463.) are available from Amazon, the publishers or herself, and have been reviewed positively in The Poetry Review and elsewhere. Some music highlights include collaborating with MIT, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Centre, Royal Ballet School, London Contemporary School of Dance, Philharmonia Orchestra, Mind, Aldeburgh Music, Alde Valley Spring Festival, Black Shuck Festival, Southwold Arts Centre, and the Brambly Hedge book series. She won scholarships and grants to study music at the Royal College of Music JD and philosophy at the University of Cambridge, whilst simultaneously visiting the Lausanne Conservatoire of Music in Switzerland. She won an Isaac Newton Bursary, an Instrumental Award Scheme Scholarship, a Dance and Music Scheme Award, an Award for Young Musicians’, a Tom Acton Trust Award, a Royal College of Music Bursary and the Freda Dinn and Ida Mabott Violin Prize for violin and composition. She studied violin with Jascha Heifetz's protégé Pierre Amoyal and is studying singing with renowned opera singer Yvonne Kenny. Besides her creative work, she has studied eight languages to varying degrees, lived all over the world before settling down in the UK, and has many interests including various sports, hiking, dancing, film, knife-making, politics, economics, science and psychology.

SELECTED RECENT news

2025 – Selected for the National Portrait Gallery Herbert Freehills Award exhibition

2025 – In bloom exhibition, Gallery Holt

2025 – Jazz singing recital and poetry reading, Southwold Arts Centre

2025 – Art on a Postcard for International Women’s Day, London

2024 – Jazz singing recital and poetry reading, Bungay St Mary’s Church

2024 – Public music commission commemorating the admittance of girls into education, Woodbridge School

2024 – Soprano solo for a newly commissioned piece of music for The Black Shuck Festival (with tenor solo, narrator, 100-person backing choir and band)

2024 – Talent Prize at the International Tera Varna Competition

2024 – Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) Rising Star, Royal Over-Seas League, London

2024 – Plates with Purpose - Make for Peace exhibition, Messums, Tisbury

2024 – Art on a Postcard for International Women’s Day, Bomb Factory, London

2023/4 – Aesthetica Art Prize longlist, York Art Gallery, York

2023 – Women in Art Prize selection, Roundhouse, London

2023 – Society of Women Artists (SWA) Karin Walker Young Artist Award, Mall Galleries, London

2023 – Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) Rising Star, Royal Over-Seas League, London

2023 – New English Art Club preselection, Mall Galleries, London

2023 – Royal Society of Portrait Painters preselection, Mall Galleries, London

2023 – Debut poetry collection Making Sense published by Verve Poetry Press (press and festival) https://vervepoetrypress.com/product/dide-making-sense/?v=79cba1185463

2023 – ‘Work-in-progress’ exhibition, and Butley Mills Studios and guests exhibition, both at Artspace

2023 – Group exhibition, The Craft House

2023 – Suffolk Open Studios exhibition, Ballroom Arts Centre

2023 – ‘Unconsumed’ exhibition, The Shoe Factory, Norwich

2022 – Propel Magazine feature, edited by Jeremy Noel-Tod, poem ‘Dead fox’

2022 – Anthony Fawcett’s choice at the ‘Vogue’ exhibition, Boomer Gallery, Tower Bridge, London

2022 – ‘Celebrating 70’ exhibition for the Queen’s Jubilee

2022 – ‘Wild Relative’ art, music and poetry exhibition, Ballroom Arts Centre

2022 – Debut poetry pamphlet Growing published by Broken Sleep Books https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/dide-growing

2022 – ‘The Artist’s Cloth’ art and music exhibition, Artspace

2021 – Tentacular Magazine feature, poems ‘Playing Sims’ and ‘=’

2021 – Popshot Quarterly Magazine feature, poem ‘Dirty washing’

2021 – ‘How do clothes define us?’ art and music exhibition, The Bank Arts Centre

2021 – ‘The Canvas Project’ exhibition, Tebbs Gallery, London

2021 – Butley Mills group exhibition, Artspace

2021 – ‘Elemental’ art, music and poetry environmental exhibition, Aldeburgh Gallery

2021 – The Rialto feature, edited by Degna Stone, poem ‘Patellofemale Syndrome’

2021 – The Lettering Arts Trust and Suffolk Poetry Society’s ‘On a knife edge’ feature, in exhibition and book

2021 – Composition performance art commission for ‘Up Close and Musical’ festival Shiry Rashkovsky (in process)

2021 – Collaboration with English National Opera assistant director Chris Hopkins’s musical show ‘Impressions’

2020 – Ipswich Arts poetry film feature on YouTube http://www.ipswich-arts.org.uk

2020 – Waveney & Blythe Arts commissioned poetry film on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=MKvpkA-ahjg&app=desktop

2020 – Raveningham Sculpture Trail exhibition

2020 – Seamus Heaney Centre poetry week participant - included on SHC podcast, and interviewed for SHC website

2020 – Artwork published in the May issue of Up the Staircase Quarterly

2020 – Solo visual art and music exhibition in collaboration with Mind charity (postponed indefinitely due to COVID-19)

2020 – Highly Commended Curator’s Award, Waveney & Blyth Arts ‘Sculpture in the Valley 2020’, Potton Hall (moved to 2021 due to COVID-19)

2020 – Butley Mills group exhibition at Grundisburgh House Art Gallery, Grundisburgh Open Gardens (moved to 2021 due to COVID-19)

2020 – Alde Valley Spring Festival, co-composed and performed music with Perhaps Contraption band clarinetist Charly Jolly for painter Emma Green in response to and with recorded birdsong, exhibited with Emma Green’s painting. Movement 1 by Dide, movement 2 by Charly, both movements improvised and performed by both https://www.aldevalleyspringfestival.co.uk/cherry-ingram-blossom-residency/

2020 – Course collaborator and tutor at AYM Beethoven Pastoral Project at Aldeburgh Music, Snape Maltings, exploring interdisciplinary artistic approaches to climate change

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