Portraits of the artists

Gally Mathias

I am an illustrator, principally children’s books, and from time to time I work for communication agencies: story-boards, roughs, campaigns…
Courtroom sketching didn’t come at me out of the blue. A TV channel contacted me because their regular artist wasn’t available and all the other artists they’d contacted didn’t feel up to the job. Apparently, people aren’t exactly fighting to get into this type of work…
For as far back as I can remember, I have always loved drawing from life, and the court sketches I saw on TV illustrating the big trials had always fascinated me.
So, without hesitation, I gave it a go, and I continue to cover one trial or another, always for the same channel. It’s a fascinating activity which involves three specific ‘difficulties’:

• managing to draw instantly from life (which is not all that complicated if you’re willing to apply yourself, but it’s the act of drawing — almost magical — that most impresses people who can’t draw and so it’s this quality that strikes people most),
• managing to create, on the spot, a drawing that will be a ‘communication’ tool, used to illustrate the journalist’s commentary. You must know how to interpret reality, stage it, capture the expressions and the significant moments, while remaining as objective as possible,
• managing to remain detached from the context… It is sometimes very difficult, indeed unbearable to be present at a trial in the Assize court when it is a question of infanticide, rape, murder… To forget what is being said without, however, losing the thread of what is happening is not always easy. One’s morale takes a real knock, and one’s moral values are severely put to the test.
Be that as it may, this activity has let me get to know the French legal system, and I must say it’s better to be a courtroom sketch artist than a juror…
You can choose the first activity, whereas you can’t refuse the second, and the decisions made by a jury have very grave consequences.

See Gally Mathias’ blog at: http://gallymathias.blogamoi.com/ .

Listen to Gally Mathias, artist - 02:07 [MP3 - 1.5 Méga octets]