Artist Isabelle Brourman’s Vivid Trump Trial Sketches Rule in a New York Show

Isabelle Brourman was a little-known fine artist until she sketched her way into stardom at the Depp-Heard trial. Now, her vivid depictions of Donald Trump are redefining the art of legal drama and have earned her a solo show at New York’s Will Shott Gallery.

“I’m on so much adrenaline,” Brourman said, describing to me how she instinctively chose to use a piece of red paper she had with her to sketch the face of the returning president amid closing arguments in his criminal “hush money” trial for payments he made to Stormy Daniels. “A lot of [the work was made] in the middle of an adrenaline moment so it was sort of just my intuition, my faith that things were going to work out.”

Brourman’s solo show at Will Shott features her courtroom sketches of the Trump trial during his New York court battles last year. The exhibition opened with bipartisan political fanfare the night before he was to be sentenced in his criminal trial and marks the artist’s second outing after she debuted her Depp-Heard work at Murmurs Gallery in Los Angeles in 2023.

While political stars packed Shott’s Chinatown gallery, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the sentencing from occurring. Ultimately, Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge. “It’s been like that, so I haven’t really come down from the adrenaline,” Brourman said.

“There’s a lot of genius in the work,” Trump has said of Brourman’s art. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has separately taken legal actions against Trump’s family business, called Brourman an “incredible artist” whose work captures “subtle emotions to major revelations.”

Brourman, 31, sat down for an interview fresh off a trip to Washington, D.C., to sketch the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth — Trump’s pick to serve as the Secretary of Defense in his second cabinet.

“It was like my first day at school because I utilized my congressional pass for the first time for on this political project and there’s not really a space for me,” she said of her time at Hegseth’s hearing. “I was being told 1,000 different things and shuttling back-and-forth trying to figure out what I could do. Eventually, I just settled for sitting with the public.”

Her rise in the art world has earned her glowing features in and the , which documented her high-octane lifestyle since deciding nearly three years ago to drive down to Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia to see the former married couple Johnny Depp and Amber Heard taking each other on in court over mutual allegations of domestic violence.

“I read an article that said, ‘Meet the people waiting in line to enter the trial’ which I forgot that that was an aspect of the justice system,” she said. “So, I drove down there, and it was just so fucking interesting.”

Brourman, who received her master’s degree in fine art drawing and painting from the Pratt Institute, felt her career solidify during the Depp-Heard trial in Virginia, driven by adrenaline and positive feedback. Inspired by Bill Hennessy, who covered significant events like President Clinton’s impeachment and the Guantanamo Bay trials, she embraced the life of a court sketch artist.

As she stepped further from her comfort zone to document the trial, she received more recognition from the public, reinforcing her nerves amid the high-stress environment.

“There’s always going to be the nerves of drawing strangers, who are being watched and who might be intimidating, and people who you might possibly in the past have looked up to and having them literally look over your shoulder at your work,” she said. “That feeling is different than confidence. I am still humble, and I still get nervous. I just know the lemonade of all that is that I can filter it through the artwork and create something honest.”

For certain witnesses, Brourman has admitted to a little preparation—such as using a certain paper she bought from a handmade paper mill in Williamsburg for Ivanka Trump. The paper has pearl dust crush adding pearl and violet tones. Such preparation, including Brourman’s organizational skills in planning the logistics of her courtroom visits, underscores her meticulous approach, blending artistry with strategy to document history.

“It takes more organization skills than I would like. I’m becoming a different person. Maybe now I am just a logistics person,” Brourman said. “It’s tough. Every like legal space I go into, the traditions are really in place. It’s hard for me to get my seat.”

Addressing her feelings amid her proximity to power, Brourman said there are some instances that feel “exciting” while other times leave her telling herself “that was too much” as she drives away from the courthouse.

“This is Stormy on the cross exam when they asked her if she hated the president,” Brourman beamed at one of her drawings. “You want to talk about confidence, she was ready to talk, and she dished everything until somebody stopped her.”

When I interviewed Brourman at the gallery, a classroom of students appeared to witness the historic show and peppered the artist with questions about her practice. Brourman took to it like an expert witness on the stand. Shott whispered that his phone has been ringing with New York area teachers seeking to visit his gallery to see the work.

Now, Brourman is preparing to cover Luigi Mangione’s trial, following his arrest after a multi-state manhunt for allegedly killing a health insurance executive in broad daylight on a New York street. Public support frames his actions as vigilantism amid widespread anger at the U.S. healthcare system.

She called her work “a collaboration with the world” and said there isn’t too much she can prepare besides arranging access to courtrooms she visits and other political theaters. As the new Trump presidency enters into play, Brourman hit at the unpredictability of it all.

“We are in the ‘concepts of a plan’ era, and I have concepts of a plan,” she said. “I have Mangione lined up to do and I’m painting the inauguration so I’m going to follow this thing through.”

Brourman unwinds by taking long walks on weekends and avoiding her phone, which her friends and family understand. “I just wanted to relax and be alone,” she said. After Trump’s civil trial, she took a trip to Mexico and spent two weeks on a boat with her family.

Among the important details in Brourman’s works that show the urgency under which they are made are quotes and names from the trials scrawled on the pages and sometimes misspelled. But not all courtroom moments are thrilling.

Brourman took time to admire fashionably dressed court stenographers in at least one of her works, and she mentioned that a witness during Trump’s civil trial was so dull discussing financial matters that she began depicting him in a cubist style.

“I was so bored I had to abstract myself,” she said. “I had to abstract him.”

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com