Harumi Shimazu

Biography

Harumi Shimazu is a visual artist based in Tokyo, Japan. She graduated with a degree in painting at Kyoto University of Art and Design in 2005. In her painting she has examined motifs based on the natural world, specifically flowers, plants and vegetables, and uses microscopic imagery as source material for her near abstract works. More recently she has been working on site–specific installations and encaustic paintings, exhibiting domestically and internationally. She views nature as a vast living organism, and tries to represent the energy of life and the ephemeral beauty in nature. Through the work, she attempts to evoke or connect with the origin of life, primitive memories and the universe.

Artist Statement

"Fragments of wax like flower petals are fluttering in the room. Glass balls are floating and swaying in space and they catch the light and reflect the room in their surfaces. I'm trying to represent the beauty and sadness of life with fragile materials. There are encaustic paintings on the wall as well. Encaustic is a technique of painting in which heated beeswax is used for paint. Colored pigments are added to the heated beeswax, which is then repeatedly applied to the surface of a painting, with the wax being cooled off and shaved in the process. As a result this creates a multi-layered marbled pattern. Beyond the visual similarity to minerals, however, the process of encaustic itself represents the ceaseless processes of nature - the shifts in the states of matter and the formation of geological strata - that have shaped our universe since its beginning. As I replicate these processes, the beauty and energy of natural phenomena are transferred to my artworks."

Artist CV