Seven Windows Looking Out from Apartment 213-Notes on Drawing Dahmer

Aug 8

By Elina, Criminal Psychologist & Artist

It began, as it often does, with a photograph. Not the infamous one, not a mugshot, but a softer version. A face neither hardened nor at peace. A stillness that made me pause.

They’ve taught us to look away. Or worse: to look only when it’s monstrous enough to make headlines. And when it comes to Dahmer, there is no shortage of monstrous. But I am not interested in monsters. I study people.

Before the headlines, before the plastic barrel, there was a boy. One who, as the record says, once found an injured bird, nursed it back to health, kept it warm in his hands. That small image stayed with me. Not to excuse, but to remember. Because if we erase the boy completely, we do something far worse than denial: we dehumanize.

As a criminal psychologist, I’ve read the confessions, parsed the interviews, examined the syntax. But as an artist, I wanted to know what silence looked like. What sadness looked like. What a quiet plea might look like on paper — not spoken, just seen.

So I drew.

Graphite and color pencil. Seven portraits. Eyes yellow, as the sign of otherness he chose— a quiet dissonance. One drawing includes the bird, nestled near the shoulder like a memory barely clinging to skin. The others hover between youth and exhaustion, between the figure and the shadow cast behind him.

This series is not about violence. It is not fascination with crime. It is grief.
Grief for what could have been prevented. For a boy who never found the right mirror. For the silence of a gay boy growing up in a closed, cold house.
For the reality that systems fail — and fail early.

I release this work as a limited collector’s pack — only 50 will exist. Not to create value, but to protect it. Because mass-producing this would betray the point.