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Ten Fingers, Ten Brushes: Meet Artist Serge Feeleenger

The self-taught artist who turned a minor annoyance into a signature style!

Art & Fashion
2 min
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ten Fingers, Ten Brushes: Meet Artist Serge Feeleenger
All stories
Art & Fashion

Most painters spend a surprising amount of studio time doing something that isn't painting: setting one brush down, rinsing it, picking up another, and finding the rhythm again. Serge Feeleenger decided he was done with all of that.

His solution? Stop putting brushes down. Period.

serge with his brushes

The Belarusian artist paints with ten brushes at once: one attached to each finger, layering color across a canvas in a blur of bristles that looks less like a painting session and more like someone playing a piano.

An Idea Born Out of Impatience

Feeleenger came up with the technique in 2011, and the origin story is refreshingly unglamorous: he simply got tired of switching brushes. So he stopped. He strapped one to every finger, and what began as a shortcut became the thing he's known for.

Controlling one brush takes years. Controlling ten independently, in real time, while composing an image? A different discipline entirely.

And he never trained for any of it. Feeleenger is self-taught, and he's spent years adapting the ten-brush method across a variety of art styles rather than locking into one look—which is why his work has found fans around the world. The brushes are the method, not the whole point.

Find Him in Wired Into Weird

Serge Feeleenger is one of the extraordinary people packed into the newest Ripley's Believe It or Not! annual, Ripley's Believe It or Not! Wired Into Weird!

Pre-order your copy today and see what else made the cut.