Mike O’Donnell is Ireland’s only full-time court artist, and in many trials his drawing is the only picture the public will ever see.
Cameras are not allowed inside an Irish courtroom. Since the new Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin began bringing prisoners in underground, photographers lost even the walk to the door, and the drawing became the image. Mike draws in ink, in minutes, and his work has been published by the BBC, the Guardian, CNN and The Times. His exhibition Prima Facie put about six hundred figures from one legal year on the walls, and a new one, Witness, opened on 19 October.
We wrote to him because a courtroom is the one place where a face is looked at hardest, on the day its owner would least like to be seen.
LOOKS argues that appearance is not a surface but a consequence, something that shapes how others read us and decide about us. A court artist sits exactly at that point. He has the right to look when nobody else can, and whatever he puts on paper becomes, for most people, the face of that person. We expected a lesson about likeness. What came back was a view of the face as one part of a body that carries its whole history.
What follows is his own account, lightly edited, in his words.
He answered all eight questions. We have trimmed for length and punctuation and changed nothing in the meaning.
You started drawing in your local court as a boy, after an episode of Kojak. What did you see in that room that made you think a face was worth drawing?
It’s a long time ago, but I’m quite sure it was people who were still, who might make easy subjects. At the time it was impossible to draw my siblings, as they were never still. They just wanted to play football! Aside from that, I liked to draw people because my father, who was an amateur artist, always told me that people were the most challenging subjects.
Your drawing is often the only picture the public ever sees of a person on the worst day of their life. What do you owe that face, and where is the line between what you draw and what you leave out?
I hope I don’t leave anything significant out. But of course it’s impossible with ink not to leave anything out. So I depend on the viewer to fill in the blanks, so that there’s an element of constructivism. My artwork hints at the reality. It cannot capture objective reality, much as it might try.
You have said dark-haired people are easy to draw and pale, waxy faces are hard. Beyond hair and lines, what in a face makes it difficult to catch, and what tells you that you have got someone?
Every face has a signature. This is what gives the face its unique character. It is the sum of its parts, but not all parts have an equal bearing. A tiny overwork or underwork with the ink can corrupt the whole character portrayed. The challenge is to get all the variables to work together. I guess it’s like the magic of walking: there are many forces at play between bones, tendons, ligaments, joints, the nervous impulses and so on, to create a comfortable walking pattern.
Everyone in a courtroom is performing and hiding at the same time. Whose face changes most during a day, and what changes it?
I cannot say for sure. The face is a truly complex device and is subject to change at a moment’s notice. I typically draw a face in minutes, but the face is part of the complex chain of the body. This in itself seems to me to be where the inner and outer life meet, rather like the surface of water, subject to forces above and below.
Prima Facie put about six hundred figures from one legal year on the walls. Seen together, what do they say about how people carry themselves under pressure that a single drawing cannot?
I’m a believer in the notion that people’s bodies are expressions of their history, and especially of the most defining moments of their past. However, humans are master manipulators and can present alternative selves at the turn of a moment. Bodies speak complex languages, but I think they want to be understood and accepted and loved. This urge is instinctive, but it is liable to frustration, which can be misunderstood as evil.
I think a drawing can succeed in expressing the complexity of humans, much like a formula can describe a complex mathematical phenomenon. But a meaningful drawing is an acquired skill built on a necessary artistic instinct that I think has its origins way back in prehistory. Few have this combination.
The Ashling Murphy trial stayed with you, and you have a daughter the same age. What happens to your drawing when a case gets under your skin?
As time has gone on this rarely happens, but in this case, because I could identify with the victim’s parents, I withdrew from the trial. This is a luxury that others don’t have. In general terms I find myself being a little cold-blooded, which is necessary.
A personal one: you spend your days looking hard at people who cannot look back. How do you feel about being looked at, drawn or photographed yourself?
I don’t mind being looked at. I’m looked at by all kinds of people, from the lovely innocent people I meet from day to day to people on trial or convicted. I have to say I’ve never had an unpleasant experience. I’m a little self-conscious and don’t like to pose for a photograph in general, though I don’t mind if I am photographed without knowing it. I was drawn once, as far as I know. It was by a Korean artist in Germany. He showed me the work and it was wonderful.
Which drawing in Witness cost you the most to get right, and what finally made it work?
I’m at a stage where I don’t have to work too hard when I’m drawing. It flows, and I describe it as sleep-drawing, in an effort to explain the relaxed state I am in. I remember training in a pool with a Yugoslav Olympian (I’m nowhere near a good swimmer), and she told me that when she’s not fighting the water, she’s swimming well. When I’m drawing I like to think it’s effortless. I hope it shows in this exhibition. If, however, I were to pick the most difficult one, it was the drawing of Daniel Kinahan. For some reason I lost control of my hand, but it finally relaxed. I was a little hungry and tired on that Sunday evening.
Three things worth taking from this conversation.
First, the signature. The man whose drawings stand in for photographs says a likeness is not the sum of features but their balance, and that a single stroke too many can corrupt a whole character. That is the LOOKS idea that aesthetics is about eliminating errors rather than chasing perfection. Second, the surface of water. He sees the face as the place where the inner and outer life meet, moved by forces from above and below. Appearance is not the opposite of depth, it is where depth shows. And third, the self-conscious observer. A man who looks hard at strangers every working day still does not like to pose for a camera. Being looked at is never neutral, not even for the one who does the looking.
Mike O’Donnell is a court artist at the Four Courts and the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin. His work is at instagram.com/mikodonnell