Depicting Justice: My Life As A Courtroom Artist

Felicity Don, studio, drawings, street people, courtroom sketch artist

Felicity loves drawing street people.

I'm fascinated by the unique beauty of people belonging to specific cultural, ethnic and social groups. Street people, for example [...] Visually and emotionally I'm interested in capturing their peculiarity and I tend to favor extremes.

Felicity Don , Canada

Date Posted: 03/07/07

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Many court cases in North America do not allow cameras into the courtroom, especially when the case is high-profile and the presence of the media represents a distraction for the court. However, a sketch artist is typically permitted to be present during even the most sensationalistic proceedings. Working with pencils, pastels or other sketch-friendly materials, the artist can quickly capture a moment and then sell their work to media outlets, which would otherwise be denied a visual record of the trial.

They are "Courtroom Artists," also known as "Artist-Reporters" and Canadian artist Felicity Don is one of them. She has been present in some of the biggest cases in Canada, including the trial of Robert Pickton, who stands accused of murdering 26 women in Vancouver, Canada. Felicity is one of two courtroom artists accredited for this case and here she tells us how and why this occupation became her career.

Sometimes hate can lead you to love.

The deep anxiety of my school years - getting up early every morning, spending the day cloistered in classrooms, being held hostage by oppressive, tedious, punitive and authoritarian adults, not being able to move around, explore and play - caused me to lead the somewhat bohemian lifestyle I have now. This is the life I love, of comparative freedom, the life as a freelance artist.

School was a hateful place. From a little schoolhouse in England to huge faceless schools in Boston, then Ottawa, it was all jail to me. I would sit staring out of the windows, swearing that when I grew up I would free all children from the injustice of the prison system called school. I changed institutions constantly, always suffering dull, oppressive, stupid or malicious teachers. I remember as a little 8-year-old British girl, new to Ottawa, lining up with my frightened sisters to receive the strap from a teaching nun because we were late. I loathed the school system so much that when I was 10 years old my parents took me to check out a small school run by shrinks for rich distressed kids in a quaint old house in downtown Ottawa.

It was the looms of colored wool and bottles of paint which attracted me. I begged to be allowed to go, and they were happy to oblige. But it was just a mirage. We never did do much art once I was in their clutches - not that I can remember. After two years of tutelage under those, mentally ill teachers - that's how I viewed them as a child - it was onto high school.