From crime art to fetish art: Suzanne Rachel Forbes, SF Chronicle

Image by Suzanne Rachel Forbes.

I this week’s SF Chronicle column I get to meet, become the subject of, and interview Suzanne Rachel Forbes in From Crime Art to Sex Art: Former CBS/CNN court artist covers local sex events. Her interview is amazing, and some of her paintings are on SF Gate accompanying the piece! Here’s a snip:

In a dark South of Market club, the bar top was completely covered with pasties, fetish devices that defied description, and mostly-naked girls. Revelers of all genders and orientations undulated on the dance floor; I filmed burlesque babes jiggling fleshily onstage. (Link might not be SFW.) Human, living mannequins peppered the entire space immobilized in expensive fetish couture.

Off in a corner, a pretty redhead in glasses and a Mona Lisa smile sat with a large sketchbook, silently watching, recording everything.

The artist was Suzanne Rachel Forbes, using skills she perfected as a professional criminal CBS and CNN court sketch artist, to now “record” fetish events from the public to the very private. She is, I learned, welcome everywhere, known by many and loved by all. The more I discovered about this phenomenon of a woman and how she seems to be everywhere sex-related, the more intrigued I was. Forbes’ ingrained skillset comes from an era when cameras weren’t permitted in courtrooms, and the only record of closed-door legal proceedings came from the court artist’s canvas. Much of what they endure witnessing cases is horrific. In a seeming departure from that, now you can not only see (and buy) the fruits of her erotically joyful art on her online Etsy store, but you can also hire the amazing Forbes for private, erotic gift portraits — of any kind. She still is, as ever, allowed to capture images in places where cameras are seldom permitted.

It wasn’t until I was half-dressed and exposed to the artist’s eye – her paints on my floor, under the exacting, cool lens of a true quick-draw artist – that I got a chance to really find out who Forbes is, and how she went from crime to fetish sex. Canvas on her lap, she rendered with frightening accuracy and painted like quicksilver.

My top might have been undone in the Castro, but it was lovely local Forbes who blushed ever so slightly under my cross-examination.

Violet Blue: What was being a criminal case courtroom artist like?

Suzanne Rachel Forbes: I was indeed a courtroom artist, for three years in the early 1990s. I worked for the CBS station in St. Paul/Minneapolis, starting while I was still in art school. I did work for the CBS National News, for CNN and for the local papers as well. I was very good and very fast and the reporters loved me, to be perfectly honest. In Minnesota you can still be a courtroom artist as a job, because cameras are very rarely permitted in the courtroom. In addition there is a Federal district court there, so some high-profile cases passed through. I covered a bomber trial, this guy who had blown up a judge and a bunch of other folks; he was completely insane and he was building a warhead in his backyard. (…read more, sfgate.com)