Drawn testimony My four decades as a courtroom sketch artist

Courtroom sketches have been all over the media as major legal cases top the news, and Rosenberg's expressive, in-action portraits are often featured. She now proves to be as vibrant and compelling a writer as she is an artist as she tells the story of how she found her way to this competitive, high-stakes art form, explains her technique and the demanding logistics involved, and shares the insights she gleans into the law, people, and society. She has to be ready to respond instantly to sudden escalations in the proceedings, working at a fever pitch to convey the essence of passing moments. Rosenberg contrasts what she can capture with pastels, "dynamism and depth of human emotion," with what the camera records. With sketches accompanying each chapter, Rosenberg recounts her thoughts and feelings about crimes, the quest for justice, perpetrators, victims, and fame as well as what she deciphered from facial expressions and body language as she documented such indelible cases as those of Mark David Chapman, Woody Allen, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, the Boston Marathon bomber, El Chapo, Derek Chauvin, John Gotti, and Donald Trump. Perceptive, compassionate, and endlessly fascinated by how the human condition is revealed in the courtroom, Rosenberg tells riveting and resonant tales in image and word.

Rosenberg's fascinating debut offers a front row seat to some of the most high-profile criminal cases of the last four decades. As a lover of realism in a sea of abstract impressionists, Rosenberg spent her first years out of art school in the late 1970s feeling frustrated and out of step with contemporary trends. Then a 1980 lecture by courtroom artist Marilyn Church at New York City's Society of Illustrators convinced Rosenberg that her best chance at making a living doing realistic portraiture was to pick up a sketch pad and head to the courthouse. As she recounts her ascent to the top of the field--first by selling a drawing from an arraignment to NBC, then as a go-to for clients like CNN--Rosenberg provides insider details about trials she worked on, including those of Ghislaine Maxwell, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby. In a relaxed, personable style, Rosenberg writes of both the quotidian and soul-chilling aspects of her job, from drawing on her sketch pad with one hand and holding her egg salad sandwich with the other to scrubbing chalk from her hands, Lady Macbeth--style, after drawing convicted murderer John Evans. The results thrill without teetering into salaciousness. Readers will be hard-pressed to put this down. Agent: Rebecca Wearmouth, Peters, Fraser & Dunlop (U.K.). (Aug.)

Perhaps the best-known courtroom sketch artist working today looks over a long career and discusses her métier. "I reach for the primary tool of my trade, a pastel pencil, and begin to draw," writes Rosenberg. All those recent drawings of Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and Stormy Daniels ("a slightly ethereal figure, hovering ghostlike behind Cohen") in that New York City courtroom were the product of that pencil, just a few of the thousands of drawings Rosenberg has produced over the years. Starting off as a portraitist, she "put the 'starving' in starving artist," then stumbled into courtroom art, freelance work that's unpredictable and hard to plan around. Over her long career, she writes, it "has been considered the ultimate dying art." Fortunately for her, some legal proceedings ban cameras; fortunately, too, art can sometimes convey human character and emotions in ways that elude photographers and videographers. So it was, she writes near the opening, that in the initial trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, she was able to capture the nuances of a woman who seemed to regard the courtroom as a theater stage and was responsive to Rosenberg's presence: "She may have been wearing a mask almost throughout, but even with half a face she was giving me more to work with than many I have drawn across my long career." A mask over Zoom impeded her ability to capture Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, which "meant that my sketches were even more of a jigsaw puzzle than normal." With a cast of characters including John Gotti, Woody Allen, Bernie Madoff, Mark David Chapman, Bill Cosby, Susan Smith, and Tom Brady, and with smart commentary on technique, Rosenberg delivers stories for every true-crime buff--and aspiring courtroom artist. A revealing look at an often-overlooked aspect of the legal system. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.