Dr. Eleanor McQuillen’s Crime Scene Painting Spouse Vengeance Slaying

It strikes me that this painting shares the same sensibility as one of my mother’s earliest paintings, A Memorial to Lives Tragically Unrealized. While depicting a different type of crime, the details are more generalized and symbolic in nature. “Spouse vengeance slaying” are the only notes she has provided. Like the Memorial painting, this highlights an unsettling reality my mom confronted in investigating forensic deaths in Vermont —the vast majority of homicides are caused by loved ones, or at least people known by the victim.

I have watched enough CSI to know a crime of passion when I see one. Multiple gunshot wounds to the face express a lot of anger. That the murderer with gun in hand strikes a brazen pose over the victim underscores the personal and unrepentant nature of this crime. The viewer is left to unpack the evidence.

The victim dressed like a groom lays just outside a church. The car in the church parking lot has strings of items dangling off the trunk. Custom suggests these are shoes and/or cans and that a wedding is about to happen or has just occurred. Is the murderess the bride, an ex-wife, or a woman scorned? What role, if any, did the victim play in his own demise? The various interpretations will say more about the viewer, than what the artist reveals.

The important role the viewer plays in bringing meaning to the art is a recurring theme in this blog and a fitting way to close this series of crime scene paintings. Thanks Mom for the paintings and so much more.