Bain, Holston

Holston Bain (born 1978, Nassau, The Bahamas) works in both acrylic and oil paint, creating dream-like narratives that address universal themes of love and suffering. Floating figures, fractured perspective and surreal imagery are reminiscent of cave paintings, petroglyphs and graffiti, motifs that are recurrent in the work of folklorists.

Bain integrates non-traditional materials into his work such as glitter and glue to describe depth and light; and to achieve texture and dimension, Bain uses the piping tools he watched his mother employ in decorating cakes to make florets and patterns.

A graduate of S.C. McPherson High School, Bain participated in the FINCO Summer Workshops as a schoolboy. As a professional artist, his works placed in The Central Bank Annual Art Competition every year between 1997 and 2000; he has contributed paintings to numerous group shows and mounted a successful one-man retrospective at the Central Bank of the Bahamas in 2012. In 2014, Bain exhibited his works in a solo exhibition titled Art House.