The first time Anita Lester drew Erin Patterson, she made the mistake of trying to be too accurate. Lester, a courtroom artist, had just two minutes to sketch the triple murderer during her brief pre-trial hearing and spent it trying to perfectly illustrate “a little head behind a glass screen in Morwell”. What she later realised is that it’s more important to capture the mood of the accused than the exact lines of their face.
“What makes a good courtroom artist is being able to bring the public into the courtroom to witness the emotion of the person on trial,” she says. “You’re actually trying to just capture a feeling or a gesture that might resonate. It’s not about being the best artist in the world.”
For her next drawing of Patterson, Lester instead focused on distilling the essence of someone she perceived to be “so consistently sad”, sketching a dark, moody portrait of the mushroom killer in the witness box, her mouth downturned and misery palpable. It went global, used in news reports around the world to illustrate the particular pitiability of Australia’s most newly infamous murderer.
The Patterson trial is not the first high-profile case Lester has sketched. The Melbourne-based artist has been in court to draw everyone from the convicted sex abuser Malka Leifer to underworld figure Tony Mokbel. Her images have developed their own distinct style; murky, morbid and bleak, reminiscent of the Australian artist John Brack or Edvard Munch’s The Scream, with a dash of the exaggerated €10 caricatures done outside the Eiffel Tower.
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In Australian courts, artists like Lester play a pivotal role: cameras are banned inside courtrooms, meaning artist recreations are the only glimpse available to the public of the accused on the stand.
But it’s a job with some peculiarities. Unlike in the US, where anyone in the building is fair game, Australian courtroom artists are only allowed to sketch the person on trial. Cramped conditions mean they’re often “very squished up” while they work – part of the reason why Lester sketches on to a compact iPad, rather than spreading out with pen and paper.
And in cases like Patterson’s where suppression orders are in play, artists are bound by the same strict confidentiality rules as everyone else. In fact, Lester got in trouble for her very first sketch of Patterson, when she accidentally filed a version not intended for publication that included the creative flourish of a tiny mushroom in the bottom right hand corner (that version was meant for her sister, not the viewing public). The image was retracted, and Lester had to “build back the trust” of her employers.
It is, Lester says, “unlike any other job” – and she’s had a lot. Outside of the courtroom, Lester is a freelance artist who works across children’s books, portrait art, music and film. Three years ago a contact at a major newspaper asked if she might be available to step in to do a courtroom sketch at the last minute. She said yes, and that gig led to many more; Lester estimates she has now covered about 30 trials.
There’s a lot to love about being a court artist, including the chance to bear direct witness to huge news stories and how widely the resulting work is seen (rarely a given for visual artists).
But it’s not always easy work. Lester often only has minutes in the courtroom to get a look at her subject, then must finish off her work hurriedly outside to meet her deadline. Those are not the conditions to create your best, most refined work – a “real test of ego” for any artist, she says, especially knowing how widely circulated the sketches will be.
And listening to the grisly details of alleged murders, rapes and other violent crimes can take an emotional toll. Lester recalls leaving court after a particularly tough hearing and almost fainting because “the information was so overwhelming”. And she is often sat directly in the line of sight of those on trial, which means they get to look at her as much as she gets to look at them. Patterson would frequently look at her during her hearing, she and Malka Leifer made uncomfortable eye contact, and in another trial the accused spent his entire hearing winking and blowing kisses at Lester.
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“Afterwards the journalists in the room were like, are you OK?” Lester remembers. “The truth is, I wasn’t. And I only realised that afterwards, because when I left, I was shaking – and the drawing was shit!
“I definitely need to get some therapy,” she adds with a laugh.
And then there are the more philosophical considerations of the job. “You are profiting, in a way, off people’s tragedies,” she says. This was brought into focus during the recent plea hearing for Patterson, when several of the victims’ family members spoke in their victim impact statements about how the relentless media coverage had exacerbated their suffering. “I was cowering a little bit in my seat, because I just felt so awful,” Lester says.
Lester has now spent a lot of time watching Patterson and considers her to be “psychologically interesting character”; someone more believable than those of us who have been following along at home might expect.
“I think myself and the journalists [who were in court] have a different experience of Erin than the public, who have just crucified her,” Lester says. “And it’s not that I feel sorry for her. It’s not as simple as that. I don’t, but … when you’re in front of her in that space, she’s weak and she’s just sad, really.”
In even those accused of the worst crimes, Lester often finds something tragic.
“It doesn’t matter how awful they are – when you’re on trial, you’re vulnerable in the ultimate sense of the word,” she says. “You’re being flanked by police. You’re being literally judged and peered at. And especially if the gallery is big, or if you’re in the supreme court, where you’ve got a balcony of people looking down on you, it’s like having a spotlight on you in a dark room.
“It doesn’t matter how messed up or sociopathic you are, you’re gonna be a little kid in that situation.”