The name Bob Levey is synonymous with the best in painted decorative finishes. As one of the most established and highly regarded decorative painters in America, Levey’s clientele list reads like the Who’s Who of the Los Angeles area—Ira Gershwin, Liz Taylor, Bob Hope, Tom Cruise, Henry Winkler, Kevin Costner and Tom Jones. Yet Levey remains a modest man who credits his success to the European masters that taught him his trade.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Levey moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1952 where his father, a drummer, played professionally with jazz legends Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gellispie.
“After completing school at Hollywood High school, I planned to follow in my father’s footsteps and make a living as a jazz drummer,” says Levey. After moderate success in the music business, Levey made friends with Norman Efros, a fellow drummer and who also owned a painting business. Efros employed a number of Hollywood studio painters and one named Vic Delore became Levey’s inspiration to enter the decorative finishing business.
“I went out on a few painting jobs and when I saw Vic do some wood graining it hit me like a bolt of lightening that I could, and should, be doing this,” says Levey.
“After this experience I purchased some early volume books written by European masters on decorative painting techniques,” says Levey.
Motivated by what he read, Levey began his formal training.
“I spent some time working with Bob Coleman, a master grainer for the studios and then I met an old Englishman named Gilbert Batty,” says Levey. Batty was renowned for his decorative finishing done in the homes of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the day—Skeleton, Crosby and Hitchcock.
“I apprenticed under Batty for nearly two and a half years and during that time he taught me painting techniques he had learned while apprenticing with his uncles and grandfather early in the century. He was able to teach me wood graining and specialty finishing that many believed had been lost through the centuries,” explains Levey.
After completing his apprenticeship with Batty and still driven by his quest for knowledge, Levey decided to include faux marbling in his portfolio. To achieve this he traveled to New York and spent intensive study time with Isabel O’Neill’s award winning pupil, Ina Marx.
“It is the techniques I learned from all these sources, and years of experimentation that account for my present day success,” says Levey. “I gained some good technical knowledge from the books but it was by working with the masters I learned how to manipulate the colors and what types of tools should be used—all skills necessary to compete in today’s markets.”
But the industry has changed over the years and Levey sees more and more decorative and furniture painters entering the industry without the proper training. “There are a lot of people who try to learn these arts very quickly and then try to charge a high dollar. I would say that 70 percent of those in the industry don’t have the basic foundation or skill level to be running their own business,” says Levey.
“Those who are serious about becoming a good decorative painter should consider spending a few years after art school apprenticing with an established painter. They should learn the basics of color and materials, and how they relate to interior decoration” says Levey.
Levey suggests that a decorative painter should understand color well and know the different techniques used to create the various styles and eras of furniture, murals, wood graining, marbling, distressing and aging wood. “It is a real broad area that a person must understand before they can call themselves a decorative painter,” says Levey.