Artist Carves Paintbrushes Into Portraits From The Renaissance

Repurposing paintbrushes by giving them a new fate, Rebecca Szeto has been practicing the art of carving ladies from the Renaissance onto paintbrushes for over nineteen years now. From the famous Girl With A Pearl Earring to Geisha, the artist has reimagined traditional aesthetics with a beautiful lyrical twist. Due to which, these old and worn out paintbrushes now have a life of their own thanks to the San Francisco based artist. She uses her skill picked up for her decorative faux finishing business, which basically dealt with converting old things in new. She writes in her artist statement, “These works play with notions of re-forming beauty and value. I use humble, end-of-life, mass-produced materials inspired by my experience as a faux finisher.”

Although less of a technique, she explains to Bored Panda that this extraordinary practice has come to her more naturally. “I just enjoy the sensorial quality of “things” and being able to work with my hands, so whittling isn’t so much a new skill I need to learn but a natural desire to explore and play with a material. As a byproduct, it becomes a method/strategy/personal vocabulary in art for getting my message across in the most efficient and appropriate way,” explained Szeto.

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