Tuesday, April 8, 2008

John E List

This is the final for my portrait of John List, the New Jersey man who in 1971 killed all 5 members of his family. Reading about these murders is like something out of a movie. He was failing professionally and stealing money from his mother but one night killed everyone in his house. Neighbors say they saw each light in his house go off one at a time, and then John was gone. All that was left were corpses and a note that said he saw too much evil in the world and wanted to spare his family the pain of living in it. He was caught 18 years later, remarried with a name change.
Anyway, reading all of this back story to his dying in prison a few weeks ago of course meant that it was creepy portrait o' clock. I wanted to keep the palette almost like an old photograph, but then threw in the reflected light of a weird purple/lilac. Look at'm. Shifty, I tells ya.

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