About Loup Garou Road:

The Loup Garou is a wild and dangerous entity well anchored in the folk traditions of Louisiana. There is a lonely dark road through the Big Branch Marsh in LaCombe, Louisiana, where I live that runs eastward towards Slidell and the old 11 bridge across Lake Pontchartrain. It meanders across Bayou Lacombe and bayou Bonfouca. I take this road to visit my artists friends. 

Over the years I have come to call it the Loup-Garou road.  At night, it is dark, eerie, forbidding.  Water vines hanging from giant trees look like snakes in the shadows and sudden noises, such as cracking branches, rustling leaves, thumping and grunting often cause one to roll up the windows and lock the doors.

The Loup-Garou is part human and part wolf, changing its appearance at will, sometimes with red eyes and sometimes with yellow-green eyes but always armed with huge fangs and serrated teeth.. The Loup-Garou may be an ancestral spirit, it may be the spirit of a barren and vengeful woman. It may be both.
The Loup-Garou came from France through the Caribbean islands to Louisiana.
I remember childhood summers in the Massif Central in France. The mountains are crossed by rocky streams: it's a country of sheep-hearding and there are stories of wolves and of the Loup-Garou. In fact the Loup-Garou is found in almost all the mountainous regions of Europe. There would have always been native wolves preying on the flocks and at times there would have been that awesome wolf that no hunter could catch so strong and cunning was it. So elusive. Those wolves became the stuff of legends. These areas : the Massif Central, the foot of the Alps or the Pyrenees are also the areas were wild children were found throughout the ages: babies suckled and raised by she-wolves. Could it be that the Loup-Garou sometimes killed a woman as she crossed a dangerous forest but spared her baby and gave it to a she-wolf to raise?

Transported to Louisiana, was it meant to dissuade the slaves from running away during the night? Also a barren woman would have been less valuable to the slave-owner than a woman who could produce many children. The fear of turning into a Loup-Garou, of becoming possessed by such a Spirit would have been a great encouragement to women to bear many children.

The Louisiana Loup-Garou is associated with the Pearl River.. The Pearl River delta -known as the Honey Island Swamp - is well known for its swamp monster. Could it be in fact a Loup-Garou? All of these marshes are connected and very closely linked by the bayous, the lakes, the Pearl River.. Who truly inhabits these forbidding dark lands in the dead of the night??

Ancestral Spirit or spirit born of revenge, the Loup-Garou exhibits physical traits that remind us of our primeval roots and our primal fears.  We fear the wilderness around us and that which is wild within us.

The artist in us must dare to be wild!  We must transcend and transform the ordinary in the world and in ourselves.  To live among our peers, we accept certain norms and functons but our true emotions, unrestrained personalities and separate perceptions come out in our art.

This site is dedicated to Louisiana artists who are not represented elsewhere and are struggling to keep their art alive.  Some have been exiled from their beloved region by hurricane Katrina and the loss of their property yet their art is still inspired by the Louisiana they left behind. 

May the mysterious and wild beauty of Louisiana continue to live in their art, nourishing the legend always.

Please browse through our site, read the stories of our Louisiana Artists  and see for yourself the magical beauty of our Louisiana Art, all offered at reasonable prices for your personal enjoyment.

Severina Singh