“Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist” by Jane Rosenberg
c.2024 / Hanover Square Press / $30 / 256 pages
How do you draw a man?
Take the easy route: a circle and five lines, and you have a stick figure that’s recognizable to almost everyone. Scribble some squiggles on the circle, and you’ve depicted a woman that any preschooler could identify. Scrawl in a smiley face, voila! Count yourself an artist. Add in chalk colors, some shading, and as in the new book “Drawn Testimony” by Jane Rosenberg, you’ve told a story.
Like many artists, Jane Rosenberg grew up enchanted by colors. It started when her mother put crayons in Rosenberg’s small hands while Jane stood in her crib. It continued when her father and grandfather let her color their documents. As a teen, Rosenberg dabbled with her mother’s oil paints in their Long Island home because, of course, she planned to go to art school.
By graduation, though, her favorite portrait style was considered out of favor and Rosenberg was often out of work. She took any gig she could find until one day, she was introduced to a courtroom artist and her eyes were opened. Bravely, she cold-called around for jobs and was hired almost immediately by a local television station as a sketch artist.
Since 1946, cameras have been generally forbidden in federal courts, which means that TV viewers and newspaper readers often must use their imaginations when learning about a trial. The law has been relaxed since 1981, but artists are still in high demand to illustrate the drama behind courtroom doors.
In her long career, Rosenberg has drawn Ghislaine Maxwell and Mark David Chapman. She’s captured the faces of an executed man and a crime boss. She sketched Martha Stewart, Bill Cosby, and Martin Shkreli; she drew portraits of a bomber, a football player, an accused child molester, a rock star, an accused rapist, and a high-end scammer. She enjoyed sketching a former president, and one of his associates who, she says, was even more fun to draw…
So here’s the most interesting thing about “Drawn Testimony”: it’s a memoir, and a book about a highly unusual job, but you’re going to forget both as you read it.
Author Jane Rosenberg pulls readers so gently and smoothly into the crimes at hand, profiling the criminals so deftly, that this feels more like a true crime book. Yes, you’ll read about art and about sketching defendants — as well as the prosecutors and others in the courtroom — and you’ll learn about what Rosenberg does and how, but that all falls behind the stories of the crimes she records and the outcomes of the trials. Indeed, readers are treated to breathless accounts of lies, scams, murders, theft, and assault, both current and in the last century, all told with the colorful flair of a working artist just doing her job.
Despite that this is the story of a tiny slice of American life and a unique job, this memoir will have wide appeal, with artists, memoir-lovers, and true crime lovers atop the list. If that’s you, let “Drawn Testimony” draw you in.
