The couple of years I lived in Camberwell were really very productive for me. I produced a lot of paintings and felt like I was making a lot of both technical and theoretical progress in my work. For the first time I made paintings for reasons other than finding peoples' skin interesting, etc. though that played a part in some of my decision making.
I became interested in the idea of victims and the way society deals with victims of crimes compared to the perpetrators. I was astounded in both mine and my friends' ability to name one or two serial killers, for example, but unable to name any victims of any serial killers, except perhaps Katherine Tate or Gianni Versace.
I started with the above painting of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia. She was a B movie actress whose dismembered body was found by police in 1947. Her killer was never caught, but the story has been the subject of a couple of movies, the more recent one starring Josh Hartnett, I think. I was surprised by the reaction a few people had to the painting.
In light of the way people reacted to my painting of the Black Dahlia, called "Black", I rushed to finish a new painting, the one above. I hung the two next to each other and people used to comment on the playful colour, etc. usually preferring the latter until I explained that it was a painting of Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer who murdered 17 men and boys, eating some of them and sleeping with their bodies. I think the point I wanted to make was: a horrid mask does not a monster make.
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