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This is a rare and difficult form of art due to the raw material and the effort involved in molding it. Each of those dots is a sheep! ***
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I like to think that the moment of creation is an intimate experience where the artist pours some of him- or herself into their work. So in a sense the art we create is a window to our soul. If this is true the question is: can we gain some insight into the type of person someone was, is or will be just from looking at a sampling of their art? To answer this question today we shall focus on painting, which is one of the most easily viewed forms of art. I have made a collage of the work of six painters, but here is the rub: three of them were either murderers or assisted people in killing themselves. If indeed the art we create is a window to our soul, what can we tell about the artist from his or her art? Can you, just from looking at these paintings, figure out who the killers are? Give it a try. The link at the end will take you to the answers. Artist-1  Artist-2  Artist-3  Artist-4  Artist-5  Artist-6  To go to the previous post click here. So, where you able to figure it out? Could you tell which artist were murderers just from looking at their paintings? Here are the people behind the paintings:  Artist-1 These paintings were made by Suzzan Blac. Their gruesomeness reflects the fact that the author suffered severe emotional and sexual abuse while growing up in an impoverished household, eventually leading to depression and substance abuse during her adolescence. She uses these terrible images to denounce pornography and violence against women and children. The story of how she triumphed over her demons through art and aided by her caring husband is narrated in her soon to be released biography “The Rebirth of Suzzan Blac”.  Artist-2 These are some of the paintings by Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a euthanasia activist who in the nineties assisted 100 plus terminally ill patients to commit suicide employing a machine he had built and which the patient operated (The Thanatron). While not technically a killer, and in fact considered a hero by many, Kevorkian was always in trouble with the law for his activities. He was finally charged with second degree murder in 1999 for directly delivering the drugs that killed one of his patients. He was imprisoned for 8 years and died in 2011.Kevorkianwas also a Jazz musician.  Artist-3 These paintings were made in prison by John Wayne Gacy an American serial killer who murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men in the seventies stuffing many of the bodies into the crawl space of his house. The clown motif in many of his paintings is due to the fact that he would dress like one (he called himself Pogo the clown) and attend charitable events and children functions. He was executed in 1994.  Artist-4 This artist is Stephen Gammel, an American illustrator of children’s books and winner of the Caldecott medal. The works featured in the collage are illustrations that accompanied the collections of scary stories authored by Alvin Schwartz in the 1980s, which are still popular today.  Artist-5 These paintings were made by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), one of the most famous American painters of the twentieth century. The themes of his work were the land and the people in the area of Pennsylvania where he lived.  Artist-6 These paintings were made by one of the greatest mass murderers in history; Adolf Hitler. When he was a young man he wanted to become an artist, and one wonders whether the course of world history would have been different if the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna had not rejected his applications. Do you see any evidence in these paintings of the monster he would later become? There is clearly some correspondence between what is going on in the author’s life and his or her paintings, but the link can be difficult to interpret. Is the author a monster or is he/she merely trying to exorcise inner demons (Suzzan Blac) or painting for a theme (Steven Gammell)? If anything Suzzan Blac’s art looks more sinister than Kevorkian’s or Gacy’s. And what about the Fuhrer? Maybe his art did not reflect his inner world because he was just trying to paint what all artists painted at the time to try to make a living. If anything, the lack of an abstract element in his paintings is similar to those of Wyeth (i.e. they were painting the reality around them).
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