Like Children, She Keeps Her Art Close to Home

When you walk into the Rockpointe townhome of Chatsworth artist Bunny Levine, you are immediately impressed that nearly every square inch of the walls, including those in the bathroom, is covered by original art.  Some of it is the work of others, but the bulk is original pieces by Bunny and her late husband Budd, a retired architect, who had been painting most of his life.

Over the course of their marriage, Budd and Bunny travelled extensively, and took some great photographs which became inspirations for their paintings. Bunny lays claims to a "zillion" pictures.  Wherever they went, Budd always had a sketchbook in hand. At night Bunny would color Budd's sketches. They travelled mostly in California and the western states, but they had also been to the East Coast, Chicago, and to Europe.

In contrast to Budd, Bunny has been painting a relatively short time, only around 10 years. Bunny did enroll in one art class but she did not complete it.  "They took bottles, set them up on a shelf, and had us cut paper silhouettes in the shape of those bottles.  That's not what I wanted to do," she said, "so I quit the class.” So, her training as an artist was quite informal. She simply watched what Budd was doing, and decided that she could do it, too. She gave it a try and was delighted with the results.

A native of upstate New York, Bunny met and married Budd Levine in Chicago before they moved to San Francisco where she was content to be a housewife, in her words, “having and raising kids.” Frequently someone from Los Angeles came to Budd’s architectural club meetings and boasted about how many jobs were to be had in L.A.  Only to prove him wrong, Budd mailed letters seeking employment to a number of southern California companies. Astonishingly, within two days he was offered a job. So they packed up the house and kids and moved here.
 
Budd passed away two years ago, two weeks after their 59th wedding anniversary with plans in the works for their 60th.  Budd's portrait of himself and Bunny hangs in their living room; it’s a portrait of a couple deeply in love.

Using her kitchen table as her studio, Bunny has done literally hundreds of paintings in the relatively short time since she began. She works almost entirely from the photos she’s taken.  On her hikes in the Mountains she has seen parts of the old stage coach trail, and the .  Once after a fire in the hills she found an old cistern and the foundation stones from a way-house where horses were changed and travellers spent the night. These findings, she says, are no longer visible since the area has been grown over.

Bunny Levine began showing her work only recently in the last three or four years at the  in Chatsworth. Her only interest in exhibiting, though, is to show her work to others, but never to sell it.  Even though she will sell the jewelry she makes, she won’t part with her paintings. 

Bunny said she feels that she’s been painting only a short time and her works, like precious children, she wants to keep in the family.