Born in Takeo, Saga Prefecture. Lives and works in Okayama, Japan.

The characteristics of Higashijima’s work lie in its vast scale of canvas that envelops the viewer, multi-layered and abyssal theme colors such as dark blue and silver, and the physicality embodied through graffiti-like words and symbols. While the artist’s gesture generates various figures evocative of calligraphy, the overall image exists as a reality filtered through the artist’s thoughts and an actuality perceived by him—such as subtle changes of light and air, water streams on the ground, the sky or the earth’s surface. Concurrently, his work presents a way of relationship between the paintings, the space and the viewer.

“Ambiguous virtue”—a theme Higashijima has embraced for the last 30 years—conceptualizes his belief that there is a degree of beneficial force in fixing a fluid, indeterminate appearance in a form of painting. In recent years, Higashijima composes paintings in which the Oriental climate and sensibilities (on life’s uncertainty, etc.) are imbued within the texture and details of the material, and such phenomenon itself is perceived as it is.