A whole intricate world hides within abandoned tree stumps

New York artist Alison Moritsugu paints on abandoned tree stumps, and each work is like opening a door to the world; while taking in the wonderful scenery, they also awaken people's desire to protect the environment.

We can often see beautiful pastoral landscape oil paintings in the classical works of the Baroque and Rococo periods, but starting from the 19th century, humanity's unrestrained exploitation has pushed this beauty further and further away from us. Artist Alison Moritsugu, through the collision of art history and environmental awareness, creates paintings on the cross-sections of wood, including idyllic pastoral scenes, vast forests, lakes and seas, mountains and rivers, and more; the many works aim to awaken people's desire to protect the environment.

Born in Hawaii, Alison Moritsugu was surrounded by green trees and blue mountains from childhood. Perhaps influenced by her environment, she has an almost instinctive longing for beauty and nature. She has always dreamed of using painting to record and express the scenery in her heart.

In high school, she went alone to Washington and New York to study, squeezing out at least 3 hours every day to paint. Her diligent and hardworking practice allowed her, while still a student, to receive sponsorship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

When asked how she came up with the idea of using tree stumps as canvases for painting, Alison answered this way: "My hometown Hawaii is a place with abundant trees, especially in my childhood memories. Now, because of industrialization and the continuous development of commercial real estate, Hawaii has also become less green. After coming to the mainland United States to study, I found that the situation here is even worse than in Hawaii. I often meet older people who tell me that that gas station used to be a pond, that large supermarket was originally a forest, and so on. My childhood memories, the changes I have witnessed, and my personal experiences made me want to do something through the form of art. So, I began painting on tree stumps; it is like a shattered mirror, allowing people to glimpse the past with its dense forests."

Alison said: "I hope these tree stumps and the paintings on them can make people think about what we have left behind and what we have lost on this land after the excessive logging brought by industrialization. Nowadays, photos can be edited in all kinds of ways with computers, especially in tourism advertisements; those false dense forests and pure beaches make people mistakenly believe that wild nature still exists, but that is not the case. I deliberately choose to imitate the optimistic naturalist paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries on tree stumps; in the paintings there must be azure skies and verdant forests. Now, they are like fragments of the tree stump's memory, shattered."

Speaking of where the wood for these paintings comes from, Alison said: "Either old trees blown down by the wind or trees cut down by people, I buy them with money. Some of them are tree species that were once very common and are now rare; as artistic carriers, they are even more thought-provoking."

Her works outline the scenes brought by human deforestation, or create a strong contrast between once beautiful scenery and incomplete nature, in the hope of prompting reflection. On the cross-sections of trees she "creates" mirrors leading to beautiful pastoral landscapes; through the strong contrast between broken stumps and beautiful pastoral scenery, she expresses the complex relationship between humanity, nature and the environment, and awakens people's awareness of environmental protection.

Stroke by stroke, she returns to the roots the beauty of trees that humanity has severed. Whether at exhibitions or in media interviews, people all praise her tree stump paintings and compliment her as highly creative, combining the beauty of art and nature very well, but she calmly says: "I would rather not have painted these tree stump paintings; I would rather they were still growing in nature."

Alison Moritsugu's original intention in creating them was to remind humanity to protect nature. She hopes that through these works everyone can think about what we have left behind and what we have lost after excessive economic logging. At the same time, she turns unnoticed tree stumps into one beautiful artwork after another.