Harold Deeb Zabady
Harold Deeb Zabady knew from an early age that he wanted to be an artist. Drawing became a daily practice in childhood, filling yellow tablets with images while waiting for his father to come home after work. That habit of sustained observation and making established a foundation that has remained constant throughout his life.
As a teenager, Zabady expanded his creative language through 8mm filmmaking, experimenting with live-action film and clay animation. Movement, sequencing, and illusion became as important as drawing, adding a cinematic sensibility to his understanding of visual form. These early explorations broadened his sense of what art could be and how images could operate across time and space.
After graduating from high school in 1966, Zabady pursued formal training in art education, studying at Mansfield and Edinboro Universities and earning a master’s degree in studio painting. He began his professional career teaching art at New Cumberland Middle School in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, where he taught for thirty-two years. Teaching remained a parallel practice to his own studio work, reinforcing discipline, technical rigor, and sustained engagement with visual problem-solving.
Following his retirement from teaching, Zabady transitioned fully into studio practice. He developed a portfolio of paintings that led to an interview with Ivan Karp of O.K. Harris Gallery in New York City. Through Karp’s encouragement, Zabady began focusing on urban landscape painting, a direction that would become central to his work. His paintings were represented and sold through O.K. Harris Gallery until its closure in the mid-2000s.
Zabady is currently represented by Plus One Gallery in London, which features photorealistic and hyperrealist artists from around the world. His work aligns with this tradition through its meticulous attention to detail, surface, and visual precision, while retaining a personal commitment to observation and structure.
Today, Zabady continues to draw, paint, sculpt, and animate in his studio in New Cumberland, Central Pennsylvania. His practice reflects a lifetime of sustained making across disciplines, grounded in early curiosity and carried forward through decades of teaching, experimentation, and refined studio work.
