Marie Higashi was born in 1991 in Nagasaki, Japan. After graduating from Sasebo Nursing School in 2012, she began her career as a medical professional. During this time, she found herself overwhelmed by an inescapable sense of inner conflict and emotional turmoil—an experience that ultimately led her toward artistic creation. With little prior exposure to art, she began painting independently, and what started as a necessity gradually became an essential act of living.

She began presenting her work around 2018, and it quickly gained recognition beyond Japan, reaching audiences in Korea, Taiwan, London, and Switzerland. Through art fairs and exhibitions, her practice continues to expand internationally, receiving strong resonance and acclaim.

At the core of her work lies her experience as a nurse. Encounters with life and death—particularly in emergency care and operating rooms—left a profound imprint on her perception. Witnessing the astonishing precision and fragility of the human body, as well as the processes of healing and decline, she came to perceive life as something intensely vivid. These experiences continue to shape her artistic vision.

Her works are built through a process of layering and removal. Using materials such as coal tar, pigments, charcoal, animal glue, and even tea, she constructs surfaces by repeatedly applying, scraping, and eroding. Scars, traces, and voids are not flaws but essential elements of expression. This process embodies a continuous cycle of destruction and regeneration, echoing Japanese aesthetics such as wabi- sabi and mono no aware.

Higashi’s work explores the coexistence of seemingly opposing forces—good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death. Rather than separating them, she embraces their contradictions, seeking to express a reality that cannot be reduced to simple binaries. Her paintings possess a strong presence while maintaining a quiet softness, gently resonating with the viewer’s inner world.

She states: “All creation is a ‘record to be remembered,’ left behind by humanity with its soul.” For Higashi, painting is a process of understanding, unraveling, and ultimately forgiving oneself. It is also a means of encountering something beyond the self—an experience both liberating and unknown.

Her exploration continues to unfold. Through her abstract expressions, she evokes latent memories and emotions within the viewer, connecting individual experience to a broader existence.

“Beauty is not only what is pristine. Life is fragile and fleeting, yet at the same time vivid, untamed, and powerful.” In her work, one senses a quiet affirmation of this complex and often harsh world— revealing life as it truly is.