Among the armamentarium deployed by modern psychology to assess the psycho-sociopathic criminal within everyone is a battery of drawing tests.
Supposedly, these tests can distinguish between people who are legitimate potential patients and people who are murderous psychopaths.
The most well known of these tests are the HTP Test, short for House-Tree-Person Test, and the aptly named Goodenough Draw-A-Person test, both widely used, controversial and yielding interesting results.
The subject of the drawings is obvious from the names, but the results, though perhaps not sufficient to classify someone as potentially murderous, are disturbing.
Psychologists have noticed that certain people share artistic characteristics, for example the need to draw a female figure rather than a male one or decaying trees rather than healthy ones.
Schizophrenics have been known to draw houses with arms and legs or doubling features on people, such as adding two noses or two sets of eyes.
What it all means is subject to interpretation and that’s what makes these tests dubious diagnostic tools. Still, they do seem to reveal something about the “artist.”
As Oscar Wilde once put it, “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
Here are 9 criminally insane works of art produced by criminals.
John Wayne Gacy
“If you believe you’ve lived your life the right way, then you do not have nothing to fear.”
John Wayne Gacy
Gacy is best known to the world for having savagely murdered 33 teenage boys and subsequently burying their bodies in the crawl space beneath his house.
He owned a modestly successful construction company, but in his spare time he was deceitfully altruistic, volunteering his time with several organizations including the Jaycees and the Moose Club.
It is precisely in the latter where Gacy discovered clowns, and joined a local ‘clown club’ that volunteered for parades, fundraisers and entertaining hospitalized children.
Gacy eventually created his own performance character, which he named ‘Pogo the Clown,’ with whom he apparently identified with.
Behind Gacy's clown makeup lay the deranged psyche of a cold-blooded killer.
Years later while on death row, he took up painting and used his Pogo persona, basically himself, as the subject of his newfound art.
The effect is creepy, to say the least.
Oddly enough, his paintings have had exhibitions and sold for thousands of dollars.
Henry Lee Lucas
Indeed, Lucas was born a demon to an alcoholic father and a prostitute mother before unleashing his particular hell to humanity.
His murderous career began with his mother, who he killed by stabbing her in the neck with a knife.
From there on he cut short the lives of hundreds of unsuspecting victims, possibly as many as 600 people, though he was only convicted of 11 murders and sentenced to death for one unidentified victim.
In this portrait, does the monster reveal himself, or is it merely another layer of deception?
The cross-dressing, one-eyed (he was stabbed in the eye by his brother as a young boy) matricidal demon experienced the same urge as all the masters of the art of painting, and possibly all men with or without talent, the curiosity of oneself.
Following this urge to know himself, Lucas painted this self-portrait and, no doubt, revealed his true self.
No, the drawing has no title, but we thought “the demon” would fit him perfectly.
Alfred Gaynor
Gaynor was convicted for the rape and murder of nine women, all of whom, like him, were in search of crack cocaine.
Gaynor’s modus operandi was creepy in itself.
His victims, often desperately seeking crack, and Gaynor would run into each other in their drug quest.
Gaynor would rob them of their money, rape them and then strangle them.
Gaynor's artwork is as much a manifestation of his psychological distortions as the macabre scenes he left behind.
For some bizarre reason, he would leave the body in strange poses, supposedly to cause an impression on whoever found them, but it’s clear that his mind was diseased.
Some of the victims were left to be found by their children, one of which died of starvation alongside his mother’s body.
Gaynor was sentenced to life, and from the look of his artwork, we can only assume he fantasizes about helpless women wearing skimpy bikinis and lying in erotic poses.
Richard Ramirez
“Serial killers do on a small scale what governments do on a large one.”
Richard Ramirez
“Hail Satan” were the first words uttered by the “Night stalker” Richard Ramirez at his first court appearance when the judge walked in.
Ramirez, an ardent Satanist, was eventually convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries and sentenced to death in the gas chamber in his native California.
Ramirez, like the precursor of today’s Jihadist suicide bombers, was unfazed by the verdict and told reporters, “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”
The depiction of Satan may offer the clearest window into the twisted labyrinth of Ramirez's mind.
Satan, however, had other plans for his son Ramirez.
He died of complications from B-cell lymphoma due to “chronic substance abuse and chronic hepatitis C viral infection” at the age of 53 years old.
But before he died, he bequeathed us a drawing of his spiritual guide, his father and inspiration, the almighty nefarious Satan.
Ottis Elwood Toole
Friend, lover and partner in crime of Henry Lee Lucas, but without the artistic talent, Toole received two death sentences that were later commuted to life imprisonment when he confessed to his participation in at least 108 murders together with his psycho-lover Lucas.
In prison, Toole’s cell was next door to Ted Bundy’s.
Toole's art is an unsettling byproduct of his disturbed mind and criminal life.
These two events coupled with a traumatic childhood where his mother would dress him up as a girl, sexual abuse at the hands of relatives, an alcoholic father and Satanist grandmother were the fertile breeding ground for this monster and the inspiration for his ‘artwork.’
Charles Manson
”Sanity is a small box; insanity is everything.”
Charles Manson
The guru of sadism, evil and murder and deranged mastermind behind 9 brutal murders, including an eight-month pregnant Sharon Tate, an actress and wife of Polish movie director Roman Polanski, had rubbed shoulders with several leading figures of the entertainment industry before he unleashed his ‘family’ to commit the ghastly deeds that made him famous.
At one point, Manson was an aspiring singer/songwriter and even had a brief association with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, who jammed with the would-be acolyte of the devil, paid to record his songs and encouraged him to continue with his music.
Had Manson fully embraced his musical talent, would his life have taken a different trajectory? Or was his dark nature inevitable?
After being apprehended and sentenced first to death, then to life imprisonment, several acts, including Guns N’ Roses, White Zombie and Marilyn Manson, have covered some of his songs.
Looking at some of his artwork makes you think that he should have stuck to music.
Still, with his baggage, they are eerie.
Keith Hunter Jesperson
“It was their fate to die by my hands, like a car accident or illness.”
Keith Hunter Jesperson
The “Happy Face Killer” earned his moniker by signing his confession letters to the media with a smiley face.
Jesperson was upset that his murders were being attributed to others and not garnering enough attention so he wrote long letters to newspapers and prosecutors detailing his crimes.
Jesperson’s use of art seems like another facet of his twisted desire for attention and notoriety.
All in all, Jesperson was convicted of eight murders, mostly prostitutes, although, in a clear act of self-aggrandizing, he claimed to have killed 160 people.
Sentenced to life imprisonment, Jesperson whiles away the time by drawing and painting, and true to the impulse that made him sign his letters with a smiley face, a cheerful motif to decorate a tragic story, his art is no less.
Arthur Shawcross
No one can adequately explain or justify why Shawcross, variously dubbed “The Genesee River Killer,” “The Monster of the Rivers,” or “The Rochester Strangler,” depending on the location of the crimes, was released from prison after serving only 14 years for the twisted and savage rape and murder of two children.
Sadly, he was paroled and continued to prey on innocent people with enthusiastic cruelty. Shawcross was later found guilty of murdering 12 other people and was duly sentenced to life, a more fitting punishment compared to his 25-year sentence for killing the two children.
Perhaps Shawcross's art represented a fantasy world where he was not a monster, a world that was a far cry from the horror he inflicted upon his victims.
Shawcross died in prison of cardiac arrest in 2008, but not before leaving the world some of his paintings.
For someone that had engaged in rape, strangulation, mutilation and cannibalism, his painting here is quite placid and idyllic.
Perhaps he could only impress on paper that which he lacked in his mind.
Charles Bronson (now Salvador)
“I changed my name to Salvador because it means man of peace. I’m a chilled-out man.”
Charles Bronson (now Salvador)
The “most violent prisoner in Britain” is a breath of fresh air in our list.
Firstly, because Bronson has never been a psychotic serial killer; well, maybe psychotic, but never a killer.
Throughout his 61 years on this earth, 39 of them spent behind bars, Bronson has been convicted of armed robbery, wounding, wounding with intent, criminal damage, grievous bodily harm, false imprisonment, blackmail and threatening to kill, but never murder.
Not a killer, but violent to the core—Bronson's artistry seems like the universe's sick joke, doesn't it?
And secondly, because despite his violent nature, he is a true artist, not just another mentally deranged inmate pouring out his twisted personality onto a canvas.
When he’s not bashing a fellow inmate’s head, he writes poetry and paints.
He’s published 11 books and won 11 Koestler Trust Awards for his poetry and art.
A dark gallery of twisted creativity
The fascinating intersection of art and criminality—a gallery where the canvas is as twisted as the minds behind the brushstrokes.
From the eerie clown portraits of John Wayne Gacy to the self-reflective works of Henry Lee Lucas, these artists have given us a glimpse into the abyss of their souls.
And let’s not forget Charles Bronson, the “most violent prisoner in Britain,” who proves that even a life behind bars can’t stifle artistic expression.
It’s almost as if these criminals are saying, “Sure, we may be sociopaths, but at least we’re *creative* sociopaths!”
When perusing an art gallery, keep in mind: not all artists are tortured souls, but some souls are definitely torturous.
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