Today’s Amateurish Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The best known of all serial killer artists was John Wayne Gacy, who began dabbling in oil painting while in prison. Though Gacy painted everything from Disney characters to Michelangelo’s Pietà, his trademark subject was Pogo the Clown – the persona he adopted during his pre-arrest years, when he would occasionally don circus makeup and entertain the kids at the local hospital. Gacy’s amateurish oils could be had for a pittance years ago, but their value increased as they became trendy collectibles among certain celebrities, like film director John Waters and actor Johnny Depp. Since Gacy’s execution, the cost of his paintings has shot even higher. While some of his oils are explicitly creepy (like his so-called Skull Clown paintings), even his most “innocent” – like his depictions of Disney’s Seven Dwarves – have an ineffable malevolence to them.
Culled from: The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers