Titled Field Box for its resemblance to scientists’ cases that were taken into the wilderness to collect data and make discoveries from the natural world, Alison Moritsugu’s valise opens up a whole new view of nature. Six landscape scenes, painted on the cut end of log slices, are contained in an old trumpet case, and six magnifying lenses are included to let viewers examine every detail. The log specimens vary in size, type and age and the paintings range from distant wilderness scenes to fragments from a more complete landscape.

About the artist: Nature is painter Alison Mortisugu’s subject, as well as her canvas. In the tradition of the Luminists and the Hudson River School, Moritsugu paints idyllic scenes of the American landscape. But unlike the American landscape painters of the past, she paints directly on the surface of log slices, taking the sublime landscape image out of the frame and placing it back into (and onto) a natural context.

Moritsugu is a Hawaiian-born painter who currently lives along the Hudson River in New York. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, and earned an M.F.A. from the School of the Visual Arts in New York. She has exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and at the Alternative Museum in New York and has participated in artist residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York and at the Djerassi Artists Residence program in Woodside, California.

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