Strange structure: the landscape bubbles, the entire surface is filled with small cell-like formations, there are only a few scattered trees, and the sky is filled with vaguely shaped clouds. Mägi used such cellular elements only in two paintings, and it’s possible that both times he painted some Norwegian bogs. Later in Estonia, he no longer painted bogs; it was unfamiliar to him, as there were no large bogs in Mägi’s childhood places. Yet Mägi is enchanted by the dreamlike, even psychedelic nature of the bog, and perhaps he recalls stories from Estonian folklore about the mystique of bogs and supernatural experiences one could have there, if lucky.

For Mägi as an artist, there are also plenty of new experiences here. Mostly, he used multiple tones on the surface of a painting, but here everything is tinted red or at least reddish. The landscape is segmented into cell-like units. The main objects are right in front, but in the background, there’s an endless empty field, ending with undulating hills.

Mägi analyzes the bog as a magical place. He animates nature with an incomprehensible and gives this “person” an incomprehensible and only predictable framework. Do Mägi’s childhood nature experiences reflect in this? Or extreme sensitivity to external stimuli? Or some sort of memory of experience, as Mägi suffered severe hunger at one point in Norway – is this landscape a result of hunger-induced hallucinations? Or was he tired of the modernity experienced in Paris and St. Petersburg, the hustle and bustle of the city, and seeking refuge in the bog? Or was the bog somehow significant to Konrad Mägi’s entire generation? At some point around the creation of this painting, Gustav Suits wrote the poem “In Marsh Hollows,” where he says among other things:

The marsh’s embrace is full of deep hollows.

Is there rust water in them, so dark, silent

or does the land beneath gaze, so black, insane?

The marsh’s embrace is full of deep hollows.

Silver bubbles rise up from the water.

Oh longings, secret desires within the marsh,

oh dreams that vanish suddenly into emptiness!

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