The multidisciplinary artist created the ‘Los Angeles’ February cover
Art has long helped Isabelle Brourman focus. “My friends would bring in their shoes, and I would get in trouble in school for … doodling [on them],” she recalls. “The teacher called me out, [but] I was able to repeat what they were saying verbatim, so it’s always been sort of a method of actually concentrating and maybe even meditation for me.”
Hailing from Pittsburgh, Brourman evolved her doodles into a BA in art history from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the Pratt Institute in painting and drawing, the latter landing her in New York City. The multidisciplinary artist’s profile rose when she began capturing high-profile court cases through an abstract lens as a courtroom sketch artist, first starting with Depp v. Heard in Fairfax County, Virginia in 2022. Since then, she has crafted pieces from The People v. Donald Trump and The People v. Danny Masterson, and at Nicolás Maduro’s arraignment at immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, among others. The 33-year-old also painted a portrait of President Donald J. Trump, which he sat for at Mar-a-Lago.
“The Ballad of Luigi Mangione”Credit: Isabelle Brourman
Brourman’s depiction of
ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in court on Jan. 5.Credit: Isabelle Brourman
Brourman’s favorite art show she has ever done is also her first solo exhibition: the presentation of her Depp v. Heard sketches at Murmurs Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles during summer 2023. She and the Murmurs team reconstructed a courtroom using furniture and appliances they found at a set shop down the street. “I received a lot of hesitation in New York about showing that work because the whole thing had become such a charade,” Brourman says. “But I thought it was really important that because of that, we had time to reflect on what made that trial the way it was, and why we were paying attention to it the way we did. And so, L.A. understood what that was all about.”
Her appreciation for the city is further evidenced by her cover art for this month’s issue of Los Angeles magazine. Overlaying a psychedelic pink and green wormhole, Brourman digested the city’s arts and culture giants — Walt Disney Concert Hall, Getty Villa, LACMA and its new Jeff Koons “Split-Rocker” sculpture, Getty Center and its How to Be a Guerrilla Girl exhibition —through her fantastical artistic vision.
Credit: By Isabelle Brourman for Los Angeles magazine
“There’s a different energy [in L.A.] when it comes to working. It’s more inward,” Brourman says. “It’s linked to this dreamland of television, and I would say it has a really big history of artistic pilgrimage for painters and sculptors [looking to] start a new chapter. There’s more room for the imagination in a place like L.A.”