American art gallery opens with courtroom sketches from Trump's trial

It was a bitterly cold January evening the night before United States President-elect Donald Trump was set to be sentenced in a Lower Manhattan courtroom on Jan 10, and an unusual array of figures was gathered at an art gallery in Chinatown that was filled with sketches from his trial.

- Zachary Small

They were there for the opening of artist Isabelle Brourman's show Paper Trail, a collection of the works she created when she joined the courtroom sketch artists documenting the political theatre surrounding Trump's court battles in 2024 in New York.

"Seeing her work is like watching HBO for the first time: You can do that?" said MSNBC news anchor Lawrence O'Donnell, who stopped by the opening before returning to work that evening in preparation for Trump's sentencing. He had interviewed Brourman in early 2024 about her unique way of drawing the once and future president in a courtroom setting.

Brourman, 31, rarely missed a day at Trump's civil fraud trial, capturing him in a frenetic, highly personal style populated by scribbled testimony and wild hand gestures. In that trial, a judge found Trump liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and lying about the value of his properties to receive more favorable terms on loans.

She went on to sketch his Manhattan criminal trial, in which he was convicted on charges of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his 2016 campaign.