Hi-ho. Hi-ho. My, but life on Death Row is slow.
The Seven Dwarfs seem a weird subject for a notorious serial killer turned amateur artist named John Wayne Gacy, who knocked out thousands of paintings during his 14-year rest stop on Illinois' Death Row.
Just as odd is a clown's skull, the head of Jesus, famous Hollywood monsters and beautiful birds. Then there's a self-portrait in the clown get-up Gacy wore for children's parties, kindly eyes twinkling from behind garish makeup.
Steve Koschal has a simple theory about the art. "Gacy didn't paint because he loved to paint. He found out how to make a lot of money," said Koschal, who began corresponding with Gacy in 1990, four years before the killer's execution for the sadistic murders of 33 young men, most buried in the crawlspace of his home in a Chicago suburb.
Koschal bought about 200 of Gacy's paintings, and 19 of them are on exhibit at the AAA Antiques Mall in West Palm Beach through June. Prices range from $195 for an acrylic painting of a bird, to $9,500 for an oil called Dwarf's Baseball, a rather amusing depiction of Disneylike dwarfs playing the killer's beloved Chicago Cubs.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/special_reports/c1f_gacy_0605.html
It's too sad that he never felt loved (or was it "wanted"). Everybody deserves both.
