For most of Australia, it’s just a regular Monday.
But two hours’ drive from Melbourne, a courtroom in the small country town of Morwell is buzzing.
Media from across the country have assembled, armed with notepads, ready to devour every detail of the day’s proceedings.
Among the sea of journalists, artist Anita Lester stands out.
“Someone like me comes in and I’m like, sweating on the iPad … frantically sketching,” she says.
The surrounding press pack has spent the last five weeks attending the triple murder trial of Erin Patterson, feeding audiences hungry for details about the now-infamous mushroom cook killer.
Viewing rooms for members of the press have been set up as public interest in the case outstrips capacity at Latrobe Valley Law Courts. But Lester has a front row seat to proceedings.
“This particular case has just captured the nation,” she says.
It’s like a full-on folkloric story.
On the afternoon of 2 June, Patterson is about to take the stand, and Lester has her iPad and digital pencil at the ready to immortalise the moment.
“The adrenaline is so high when the suspect walks out onto the stand. You suddenly get mounted with so much pressure.”
Her drawing of Patterson will soon become synonymous with the Mushroom Trial, thrusting Lester into the spotlight, too.
Erin Patterson was convicted of murdering her estranged husband’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson. She was also found guilty of attempting to kill Heather’s husband, Ian. Source: AFP / Martin Keep
Becoming a courtroom artist
“I have a relationship with a newspaper that just invited me to do it on a whim,” she says.
Other publications took a liking to Lester’s art and syndicated the drawings.
“Then I started getting calls from all the different networks, and now I seem to be one of the first people [that] people call.”
The 39-year-old multidisciplinary artist has since drawn other high-profile figures, including gangland boss Tony Mokbel and alleged Easey Street murderer Perry Kouroumblis.
Notorious gangland figure Tony Mokbel is among the other high-profile figures Lester has produced courtroom sketches of. Source: AAP / Anita Lester
Cameras are banned from most Australian courtrooms to protect those on trial, along with witnesses and the jury.
Media outlets commission artists to fill the visual void, continuing the centuries-old tradition of courtroom art.
Lester had just two minutes to draw Patterson the first time she saw her in court, at Patterson’s 2023 filing hearing, but there was more time when she took the stand in June.
Capturing ‘curmudgeoned’ Patterson
Recalling the moment Patterson stepped up, Lester says she just stared for a minute, taking a mental snapshot before putting pen to paper.
“I just like, do the roughest, ugliest sketch you’ve ever seen, just to put things down,” she says.
Unlike those around her who are hungry for information, Lester tries to block out details that can be “quite interesting”, “full-on”, and “a little bit traumatising”.
It’s like kind of a meditation. You have to try really hard not to listen to what is actually going on in the courtroom.
After 10 minutes of drawing, the courtroom closes.
Lester explains: “I run outside, I find the closest seat, I put on headphones and I just draw and finish the drawing, retaining the information that I’ve collected in those minutes.”
Two hours after getting the call to come into court, her drawing is on online news sites.
When Lester first saw Patterson in court in 2023, she only had two minutes to draw her. Source: AAP / Anita Lester
Lester is one of the first artists allowed to draw digitally in an Australian courtroom.
Although she concedes digital art lacks some of the nuances of pastel and charcoal, she says they are “so impractical” to use. Instead, she customises digital brushes with a trail of “digital dust” to mimic physical art supplies.
“The first time I was in court, there was someone who had this amazing little portable station, but I was looking at him half the time thinking, ‘what a nightmare’.”
Instead of copying exactly what she sees, Lester focuses on getting the emotions of the subject.
“If I’m being critical about my earlier drawings, I was fixating a lot on trying to get accurate representations of the person.
“Perhaps why this particular drawing that I’ve done of Erin has been so visceral for people is because I captured her misery.”
While there are no hard and fast rules for courtroom art, Lester says she sticks to tradition, allowing some of her style to come through without being overly impressionistic and always prioritising getting a likeness of the subject.
“I think part of the thing that people really like about courtroom art is there is a predictability to what you’re looking at.”
She says court artists need to put their “journalist hat” on.
“You are giving the people what they want. You’re giving them this experience that you’re having, but the experience of the story that is being told as well,” she says.
Distress was at the heart of Lester’s courtroom experience with Patterson.
“I was sitting there and she looked so curmudgeoned the whole time.”
Anita Lester focuses on capturing the emotions of the subjects of her courtroom sketches, rather than copying exactly what she sees. Source: SBS News / Rania Yallop
So Lester chose to exaggerate the emotions she saw on the stand.
“You don’t cheat the details,” she says.
I think you have to be as honest as you can.
Lester’s earlier court portraits have depicted subjects along with details of the surrounding courtroom, which she feels detracted from the emotion of the subject. So she decided to take a different approach to Patterson in June.
“I just wanted to focus on her. She was so distressed this day in court, I actually felt a bit bad for her, if I’m being totally honest,” Lester says.
“I wanted to take away any distractions.”
Balancing storytelling and sensitivity
Lester is often exposed to details hidden from the public, but the intimacy of the courtroom exposes something else, too.
“I think what people don’t realise when people are on trial [is that] they’re terrified. They’re being put under a microscope,” she says.
Even when people are the “guiltiest in the world”, Lester says something sensitive is revealed in the courtroom setting.
“When the lines are a bit blurred, you are privy to seeing something more vulnerable and almost childlike.”
Anita Lester is a multidisciplinary artist based in Melbourne. Source: SBS News / Rania Yallop
Lester says the weirdest part of the job is being noticed by the accused, often being stared at the whole time.
But the whole experience of the Mushroom Trial has been surreal, with people contacting her daily about the case, including sending fan art.
“That was just a tiny little snippet of my life, but now I’m intrinsically tied to this conversation,” she says.
“It’s wild, it’s two hours of my life [that] has become the thing that I am now associated with, which is so weird.”
