A Little History of Lebenzon Paintbrushes

Keith founded Lebenzon Paintbrushes back in the late 1970s. The idea grew from his background in creating pottery and art education. Over time Keith shifted his efforts away from making pottery and toward making paintbrushes. He liked to tell the story about the moment he held up a piece of bamboo and put something that looked like a bristle in it. He didn’t know it then, but that moment changed his life.

Beyond that point he spent a lot of time and energy developing brushes and that led to his exhibiting at major Art Shows and Artist Specialty conferences all over the country during a time span of about 20 years. Keith made 10s of thousands of brushes. Visitors to my exhibit tell me Keith’s brushes are still used today to make countless artworks. Keith also made a vast number of acquaintances and friendships across the country and well beyond.

Keith passed on rather suddenly in 2008.

Keith and I were friends and also 1^st cousins. I used to hang out at his pottery studio which was located in his older brother’s basement, and years later at Keith’s own home. As an aside, i learned recently that Keith’s older brother, named Lowell, played a large part in Keith’s success. Keith probably would have never got his paintbrush business off the ground, if not for Lowell’s help.

Anyway, Keith and i got together frequently and swapped stories over many years. I admired that Keith made a beautiful line of unique pottery and later he started to make and sell amazing and very responsive paintbrushes.

In kind of a sad irony, Keith asked me more than once over the years help him make and sell the brushes. At the time my interests were elsewhere.

At his funeral I was one of his pallbearers. It was there where I decided to take a leap of faith and started devoting resources and increasing time to pursuing my artistic interest at the time, which was was highly polished panoramic photographs. I exhibited my photos first at Seattle area Art Galleries and later at Art Festivals. My work quickly became well liked and was shown at one time or another in just about all of the top Art Festivals in Washington State, which is my home state, and beyond.

From there, and in the interest of brevity, during 2014 I had an injury that brought my photography exhibitions to an end.

Because I love exhibiting at Art Festivals, I decided to teach myself………. (wait for it) ……. how to make brushes. Two years passed between the time i made my first bristle tests and when i was comfortable with the results. During the 2nd year of development I started to exhibit my brushes at area Art Festivals.

Well, here it is in 2021 and it’s my 14th year of exhibiting my creative results and the 6th year of selling my hand made brushes. I’ve had good success offering my brushes to the public and have made and sold thousands of them. My successes have included many of the top rated Juried Art Festivals in the USA plus many artist specialty shows.

Some of the success is due in part to the fabulous work of my cousin Keith, who did excellent work and blazed a trail over nearly 20 years.

A larger part is due to a combination of lots of work, lots of re-investment, and continual refinement, plus some good luck. The refinement originates from feedback from those who have tried and bought my brushes.

Brush making and exhibiting at Art events is in a small part a tribute to my favorite cousin Keith. At many shows someone comes to my booth to ask about Keith. The work i do and some i meet on occasion helps me to remember conversations from long ago with Keith. I’ve had the unique pleasure to learn a lot about Keith from some of his many friends and acquaintances.

The publication of the paintbrush web site has let me me reach further. During the first year of my web site i shipped brushes to artist in around 40 countries and the web site has been visited by artists in just about every country on earth. I will continue to exhibit at juried Art shows when it is safe to interact with typical art show visitors. Check out my upcoming shows here. I add new shows around the end of the month, so check back.