About the artist
The story so far.
Bent Rushmore is an artist out of Tallinn, Estonia, a winner and a nominee of zero awards. For the better part of two decades he has been drawing strange faces into little black sketchbooks, and he writes blues and electronic music besides. Same hand, same restless need to make something.
Strange faces
It started around 2008, with a pen and whatever paper was nearest. Waiting on something, half-bored, Bent would scribble, and odd little faces began turning up on the page almost on their own. The weirder they got, the better. The earliest ones still around date to about 2012.
He drew them everywhere: cafés, kitchens, bars, beaches, in Tallinn, Pärnu, Berlin, and wherever else life took him. Mostly he gave them away, to friends and strangers alike. What began as a way to dodge boredom quietly became something more, a way to think, to settle, to say what he couldn’t otherwise.
“When I draw I fall into a strange flow. For long stretches I’m completely in the moment, and the worried thoughts leave me be. That’s why there’s always a little sketchbook in my bag.”
Onto canvas
In 2026 the faces grew up. Bent moved to paint, blowing the same un-earthly portraits up to wall size while keeping the raw, hand-drawn line intact. Monochrome and deliberately unsettling, made to start a conversation, and to make you feel something.
And the music
Music came first, and never left. Bent grew up in Soviet-era Estonia, where Western pop was mostly banned and music went underground. His father drove a taxi by day and smuggled vinyl by night, taping records bought from visiting foreigners and selling the cassettes on to local DJs. Bent grew up at his side, hand on the record button, and the love stuck. By the 1990s he was DJing from his father’s collection. He bought his first electric guitar in Phuket in 2005 and spent a while bashing out Nirvana songs for friends; one of them, Paul Aguraiuja, had quietly taken up bass, and with Rasmus “Razka” Nurk on drums the three became Köömes in 2006, now a six-piece with four albums and airplay on Estonian radio. Alongside the band he keeps writing alone, in blues and in electronic. Early in 2026 he wrote his first film score, for the 45-minute Estonian short Idioot.
Listen on
What’s next
The journey continues, on the page and on the wall. Bent is always drawing, always writing. New faces keep arriving, larger every time, and a new blues record waits to be pressed to vinyl.
Where to next
Two sides, one artist.