In Alison Moritsugu’s on-going series of log paintings, she uses art and art history to examine our past and present relationship with the land. What at first appears an homage to the idyllic art of the Hudson River School and to the European pastoral tradition is, upon further viewing, a questioning of these very genres. Themes of conquest, disguised in various forms, are a crucial part of the work. The transformation of a wilderness state to a cultivated one and images of conquest are seen repeatedly in the landscape tradition. By taking these images out of their familiar context, the framed canvas, and painting them onto real wood and bark, Moritsugu suggests that the very idea of landscape implicates a human dominance.

Moritsugu presents vast landscapes bathed in ethereal light, suggesting by earlier painters that the new frontier is limitless and bountiful, even ripe for conquest. Their paintings mirrored a deeply embedded political construct of the time: Manifest Destiny, a conviction held throughout the 18th and 19th centuries that it was ordained by God that European settlers should expand their territories over the whole of North America, thereby expanding America’s political, social and economic influences regardless of costs, including the forceful removal of the Native Americans.

With pollution and global warming of our post-industrial era, this legacy of an earthly paradise might seem lost, yet yearnings to return to a state of balance and harmony with nature that existed in Eden linger as leitmotifs in Moritsugu’s work. The artist directly confronts this discourse, using the language of Luminism to critique its underlining presumption of destiny and right. Painting on cut wood that otherwise would be turned to mulch, and describing imaginary vistas in a clear ethereal light that accentuates the artifice of these scenes, Moritsugu denies any notion of authenticity attached to her image of an imaginary paradise. Instead she evokes a sense of mournful nostalgia in which the painting’s surface, a slice of real tree, counters any celebration of nature with the memory of its destruction.

Among the museums her work has been exhibited are: Knoxville Museum of Art, TN; Kohler Arts Center, WI; The Palmer Museum, Penn State University, PA; New York Academy of Sciences, NY; The Hudson River Museum, NY; Sun Valley Center for the Arts, ID; Maier Museum of Art, VA; Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, VA; Art Museum at Florida International University, FL; The Rotunda Gallery, NY; The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art And Design, MO; Palo Alto Cultural Center, CA; The Bronx Museum of The Arts, NY.