Many say that to paint is to show your soul to the world. There are a multitude of emotions that an artist goes through when creating a painting. Where words fail, art can convey. Our deep seated sub conscious comes to life and its our own way of connecting to the world. So when a paintbrush is in the hands of a notorious killer what can we expect to see?
The following killers have took the lives of others into their own hands and during the time they served in prison, created some seriously chilling pieces of artwork.
IMAGES: theghostdiaries.com
John Wayne Gacy
Dubbed ‘The Killer Clown’, John Wayne Gacy was a party performer named ‘Pogo the Clown’. He was found responsible for the sexual assault and murder of at least 33 teenage boys and young men between the years 1972 and 1978. He was finally traced and tracked down when police discovered bodies buried beneath his house in Illinois, US. Beneath are pieces of his artwork while he was imprisoned.
Alfred Gaynor
Convicted in 2000, Alfred Gaynor killed 9 women between April 1995 and February 1998. He posed their bodies in gruesome positions so he could traumatise whoever discovered them. During his time spent in prison serving a life sentence he has created some haunting paintings including “Murder Beach”.
Henry Lee Lucas
Lucas was a notorious serial killer, convicted of 11 different murder cases that took place between 1960 – 1983. Although he confessed to partaking in well over 600 in total, he later denied his association with the killings. No one is quite sure how many murders he had truly committed, but
police officers have an accepted estimate of around 350.
While he was imprisoned, Lucas created many pieces of art for his gallery from peaceful landscapes to snarling demons demonstrating the conflict in his mind.
Keith Hunter Jesperson
Keith Hunter Jesperson had earned the nickname ‘The Happy Faced Killer’. He drew smiley faces on taunting letters he sent to numerous media stations during his killing spree. In the early 90s, he claimed the lives of eight women in America. He also claimed to have killed a further 160 people but this is yet to be proven.
During his stay in prison, the artwork he created was of a crude, childish manner.
Richard Ramirez
Richard Ramirez is currently awaiting execution on death row after murdering an estimated 14 people back in 1985, in California. His highly publicized home invasion crime spree in Los Angeles and San Francisco, from June 1984 until August 1985, earned him the title “The Night Stalker” by the media. He used a wide variety of weapons, including handguns, knives, a machete, a tire iron, and a hammer.
Ramirez is a Satanist and his artwork consists of demonic creatures, devils and skulls.
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