The Volo Bog

Back in 1991, when I was a teenager living in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, I heard about a guy who shot himself in the woods surrounding the Volo Bog. His corpse was discovered by kids who never told authorities and they would revisit it over the course of 5 months. The word got around, naturally, and the body was finally taken away after someone fired the remaining bullets into the corpse with it's own gun. I never saw the body, but I sometimes wonder what degree of decomposition it must have been in towards the end. Anyway, the story has always lurked in the back of my mind all these years and so I decided to pay a visit.

After learning more about bogs, I’ve become fascinated with them; carnivorous pitcher plants, wild orchids and, of course, the bog people of Scandinavia, many of which were victims of ancient ritual sacrifice, their bodies preserved for thousands of years due to the unique chemistry of peat bogs that prevent decay. I highly recommend, “The Bog People,” by P. V. Glob, if you’re interested in reading more on the subject. I plan to visit more bogs over time.

"The Volo Bog in February," 2012 Oil on canvas, 38 x 48

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New Comic Book!

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The rain is nice, it washes away the smell of death

An oldie, but a goodie from 2000, "The rain is nice, it washes away the smell of death" Oil on canvas




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Figure Study with Gold

Imagine entering a room where there is a continuous build up and discharge of energy resulting from terror or fright. Suppose this terror is released in the form of bioelectric currents into the room’s atmosphere, which then becomes charged. Every day the ionization of this bioelectromagnetic field reverberates, like an echo chamber, or perhaps like the whirling snowflakes trapped within a shaken snow globe. During periods of inactivity, the particles eventually settle, leaving a lingering psychic “fingerprint” within the room. For instance, if you’ve ever walked into a room and felt an unexplainable foreboding or some other unusual sensation, it may be a result of this phenomenon, which then in turn makes you feel an uneasy fear (or perhaps depression). This electric outpouring of fear is then recycled and absorbed back into the barren, hungry atmosphere of the room, thus agitating and recharging its’ power. At this point, the room itself has become a vampire, starving not for blood, but for fright. This is actually the basic concept of a haunting. If the magnitude of the bioelectromagnetic field within the haunted room is extraordinarily high resulting from extreme terror, visual and auditory apparitions may manifest. Perhaps this psychic subjugation would leave one bereft of normal cognitive function and thus susceptible to possession? Maybe, in this state and under certain circumstances, a complete lycanthropic metamorphosis is possible? Just some thoughts anyway…




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Mourner, painting progression

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