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Hiske Tas Bain
AUSTRALIA
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"Beauty and interest are everywhere, if only we pause to look."
Born in The Hague, Hiske Tas Bain came of age within a rich European artistic tradition before her life carried her across continents and cultures. Her formal education began at the Hague Royal Academy of Arts, continued at the Free Academy, and extended to the Royal Regent Academy of Arts in London. These foundations gave her a disciplined visual language that later travel would loosen, expand, and transform. Journeys through Europe, Asia, and the Americas, alongside years spent living in Paris, London, New York, and Antwerp, shaped a painter attentive to the poetic and symbolic dimensions of experience. That restless movement eventually led her to Australia, where she now lives and works.
Flood Moon | Acrylic
$2,000
24" x 28"
After a big flood here on Australia's North Coast, I was sitting on my veranda in the evening, the moon coming up, contemplating that all of a sudden I had a waterfront place instead of paddocks.
Drawing inspiration from Surrealism, Dadaism, and Magical Realism, Bain creates images that move beyond direct representation into realms of memory, dream, and transformation. Her paintings often evoke the feeling that reality is not fixed but fluid and permeable, capable of revealing beauty and mystery in unexpected ways. She is drawn to the symbolic power of nature, humanity, and cultural imagery, using these elements to construct works that invite both reflection and wonder. Rather than presenting the world as fragmented or depleted, she seeks to show its regenerative and life-affirming possibilities. Each canvas becomes a threshold where the ordinary opens quietly onto the extraordinary.
Symphony In Violet | Acrylic
$1,600
19" x 24"
Just a memory of my youth in Holland: my father used to play the violin, and violets are my favourite flowers.
"Nature speaks to me as a living presence, never as scenery."
Nature forms a strong thread running through her work, appearing not merely as subject but as living presence. Landscapes, flora, figures, and mythic forms enter her paintings as carriers of emotional and spiritual resonance. For Bain, the natural world is a source of wisdom and a mirror for human consciousness, never simply a backdrop. Through colour, form, and layered imagery, she explores the relationship between the outer world and the inner life, suggesting the two are deeply connected. Her compositions often hold stillness and movement at once, creating spaces where memory, imagination, and lived experience meet. This is a vision of nature as companion rather than scenery.
The Force Of Nature | Acrylic
$2,000
24" x 28"
I painted this because we see that nature always restores and renews.
Movement across the world has defined both her biography and her imagination. Having travelled extensively through Europe and Asia, and having lived on several continents, she absorbed the textures of many places into a single expansive visual vocabulary. Travel became one of her enduring passions, a way of gathering images, symbols, and encounters that would later surface within her paintings. The imprint of these journeys gives her work its layered, border-crossing quality, where a memory of Holland might sit beside the vastness of the Australian desert. Such breadth allows her canvases to feel at once rooted in specific places and open to universal feeling.
The wonder in nature inspired me to make this painting, how the snail carries his home on his back and the magic of the creatures who share this earth with us.
Home Sweet Home | Acrylic
$950
14" x 18"
"Living among the women of Ernabella changed everything; there I understood that a single painting can carry healing, knowledge, and the quiet continuity of a culture."
"My paintings are my way of choosing hope over despair; I gather dreams, journeys, and half-remembered places, then let them settle onto the canvas as something luminous. Though we live in uncertain and often painful times, I would rather point toward tenderness, strength, and the quiet magic that still surrounds us, painting not only the world as it stands but the kinder, more radiant version I believe it could become."
Where Have All The Christmas Beetles Gone | Acrylic
$1,200
16" x 20"
When it's Christmas here in Australia, there used to be a lot of Christmas beetles around. They are beautiful golden beetles that appear in the evening. Lately I haven't seen all that many, so I painted this painting in the hope they come back!
Perhaps the most formative chapter of her life unfolded among the tribal women of Ernabella in the Northern Territory of Australia. Living and working there as a natural therapist, Bain shared knowledge of craft and culture with the Aboriginal women, an exchange that reshaped her understanding of what art can hold. She came to see creative practice as something capable of carrying healing, knowledge, and cultural continuity. This immersion, deepened by her involvement in Australian Indigenous, American Indian, and Polynesian Kahuna Shamanism, gave her work a purpose beyond the visual. Art, for her, became a vessel of connection, restoration, and shared human wisdom.
She Wandered Lighthearted | Acrylic
$1,600
19" x 24"
In my garden there was an amazing rock, almost egg-shaped, with fungus in beautiful colours and a pea-coloured insect.
Healing sits at the very centre of her artistic philosophy. Trained and initiated within several spiritual traditions, and having taught healing art around the world, she approaches painting as a form of restorative expression. Her canvases do not simply aim to please the eye; they seek to open a space for contemplation, connection, and renewal. She believes that art can restore a sense of wonder and invite a more positive way of seeing. In a culture often preoccupied with loss and destruction, her work gently insists on grace, resilience, and possibility. Beauty, in her hands, becomes a quiet instrument of repair.
It was early morning, looking out at the rainforest, a coffee in my hand, pondering the serenity and beauty of nature.
In The Rainforest | Acrylic
$1,600
19" x 24"
Memory and dream provide much of the raw material for her imagery. Fleeting moments, journeys, symbols, and places, along with the emotional traces they leave behind, are woven into her paintings with sensitivity and imagination. She is fascinated by the way experience lingers, resurfacing transformed within a composition years after the original encounter. This attention to the transient gives her work a tender, reflective quality, as though each painting were holding something precious against forgetting. The result is imagery that feels both deeply personal and widely resonant, inviting viewers to recall their own dreams, travels, and half-remembered moments of quiet astonishment.
"Traveling has always been one of my deepest passions."
Optimism, rather than despair, guides the spirit of her practice. Throughout her career, Bain has remained committed to showing the beauty and dignity of life, even in a world marked by conflict, loss, and uncertainty. Her work reflects a belief that art can offer an alternative to hopelessness by illuminating what is graceful, resilient, and possible. She chooses to portray the positive side of what is and what could be, rather than dwelling on ruin. This is not naivety but a deliberate stance, a decision to use painting as a means of turning attention toward renewal and the enduring generosity of the living world.
Friesian Rhapsody | Acrylic
$1,600
19" x 24"
A memory of my birth country, The Netherlands, I used to love ice skating.
Recognition has followed her sustained dedication over many decades. Her honours include the Palm Award received across several years, diplomas of excellence from the Art Addiction Medial Museum, and multiple Awards of Excellence from Manhattan Arts International. She has also received the International Premio Velazquez in Spain, an Honourable Mention from Circle Art, and a Masterful Mind Award, among others. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and catalogues across Germany, Holland, Spain, Arizona, and Italy, as well as international magazines devoted to contemporary and visual art. These acknowledgements trace a long, international career built on consistency, imagination, and an unmistakable personal vision.
There are no pearls on the beach; you have to dive to get one. I painted this to remind myself that nothing comes easy, we have to work for it.
Pearl | Acrylic
$1,400
16" x 20"
Across the course of her career, Bain has exhibited in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Australia. Her work continues to evolve, yet remains grounded in the same essential impulse: to reveal the extraordinary within the ordinary, and to communicate the richness of a life lived in dialogue with culture, nature, and spirit. Her paintings are informed by memory, travel, and the enduring belief that art can help people see the world more compassionately and more deeply. In this way, her practice stands as both a personal expression and an offering to others, a celebration of beauty, imagination, and the healing possibilities of art.
Opal | Acrylic
$1,400
16" x 20"
To me, the opal is such a magical gem. I love wearing it. The symbolism of the opal is creativity and imagination, and wearing it will give clarity to the eyes.
"Reality, for me, is fluid and endlessly open to wonder."
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