Marilyn Church

We are featuring Marilyn Church, one of the most revered courtroom artists.

Marilyn Church has been balancing two major art careers. One as a very successful painter where she has explored her subject, the figure, in non-traditional and innovative ways for the past 25 years. Secondly, she has also been the foremost courtroom artist, covering the most sensational trials for the New York Times and ABC News, for which she has won a New York Press Club Award and an Emmy.

Learn more about this fantastic artist and her captivating work...visit her website at the following link: www.marilynchurch.com

Marilyn Church

"I knew after my first day in court that I was hooked on drawing people in open warfare, battling to save themselves."

"I'm an artist, and my subject matter is crime and punishment."

" I've drawn the tears of victims, the pointing finger of the accuser, the despair of the condemned, and the joy of the aquitted. While other artists are drawing still lifes, landscapes, and nudes, I knew after my first day in court, that I was hooked on drawing people in open warfare battling to save themselves."

"By the time a big story like "Son of Sam" or "Jean Harris" gets to court, public interest is already at a high pitch. The marketing of the crime has begun. Newspapers and TV are going for the sales and ratings, and the pressure is on to beat out the competitors to get the best story."

" All of this energy and pressure builds and is electrifying. Even if it is an arraignment or a sentencing, which will only take moments, I try to capture the action and the emotions and make it into a picture."

"I use color to heighten the drama. I make the people instantly recognizable, trying to make my drawings both compelling and journalistically correct."

"The conditions are unbelievable once I've gotten a seat, often a result of waiting in long lines and cajoling court officers and sometimes judges. I am there now, dead center behind the defendant, balancing art supplies on my lap, jammed in on both sides by other artists, pads overlapping, all of us straining to see around guards to the defendant, and hoping he'll turn his head for a moment so a profile can be caught."

" The concentration is so intense that I work on intuition, on prayer, and willing the scene to paper. "

" The biggest hindrance is the pressure of the deadline. I never know if a 'proceeding' will abruptly end before I'm halfway done. It's always playing 'beat the clock.' "

" Sometimes I'm working so quickly I feel as though I am going to explode. The witness has just stood up and accused the defendant of being the one who was at the scene of the crime."

"There's an outbreak of reaction from the audience."

"The judge calls a recess for the day. It's minutes before our airtime and my reporter is ready to rip the drawing off my pad and have it videotaped." "How does an artist produce drawings under these conditions?"

" I can't freeze the action except in my mind. Only recently have I realized that in order to draw these scenes, I have to live them and feel them happening. They become a part of me, but no matter how I try to describe it or analyze it I don't really know how I do these drawings."

" Observers say it's magic. Other artists see the mechanics of it."

" Lawyers think I haven't given them enough hair, the defendant thinks I made him look too angry, editors say it takes too long, and my agent says '"How much do you think we can get for it?' "

" The magic is that it's not done in a moment:
it takes a lifetime of drawing, of studying faces and gestures.
it's every moment I've ever spent in a museum.
it's the sum of the human experiences and feelings I share with them. "

" Even though I use my art somewhat like a camera, with skill and detachment, I realize that the drawings are always being filtered through my own human responses, which make them richer than any photographic record of the events."

" A photograph cannot make the choices that I can. At the end of a day of drawing, much of it must be discarded, but the best ones are a synthesis of all the key elements that were in play. The majestic court room, the emotions, the major players, the reaction of parents, the accused, the victims and the widows. It's a picture that no photograph could ever capture."

" There are painfully real dramas that I've seen played out thousands of times by now. The fact that by the time one comes to trial (85% are convicted) means that I'm not usually witness to happy endings. I'm often asked my opinion of the trial, and it's frustrating to think, that at the end of a long trial that we expect to understand these criminals and their motives, but we never really do."

" As an artist I try to see beyond the surface to a more intense vision of reality, and to have my drawings convey this. But what makes a man step out of an ordinary life to become headline fodder, can only be guessed at."

" In the end the defendant remains unknowable, and the secrets are locked in his or her heart. Sometimes thoughts of them pursue me afterwards .... I end up dreaming about them. "

Marilyn Church