About Schnepf
Last evening we enjoyed dinner with a great friend and airbrush legend Raphael Schnepf, and his wife Margaret. For anyone who is not familiar with Raphael or his art, you owe yourself a visit to his web site at http://www.rschnepf.com. His work is legendary, and quite honestly, he’s just an all-around great guy.
Raphael Schnepf has been on the Art scene since he graduated from New York’s High School of Industrial Art in 1954. After a brief tour with the Navy as a photographer, he went on to graduate from Cooper Union Art school in New York and completed his B.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1965, he became active in the emerging San Francisco counterculture, creating psychedelic paintings, post cards, drawings, music posters and illustrations. After seeing his poster for the 1967 Summer of Love, the Family Dog commissioned the first of seven posters Raphael was to create in ‘67 and ‘68. This led to commissions for a comic book for the band “Canned Heat”, record jackets, more posters and illustrations.
During the 70’s, Raphael continued to explore new mediums. After rediscovering the airbrush, he developed a photo-real style, creating images for book jackets, record jackets, murals, packaging, and posters. In the late 70’s, Raphael joined with Savoy Studio as a designer and glass painter on many revolutionary glass projects. In 1986, he moved with Savoy to Portland, Oregon to continue the collaboration as well as his own design and illustration career. He has worked for clients like Intel, Techtronix, Nike, Precision Castparts and Grateful Dead, always seeking out poster commissions as well. In the 90’s, ThrustMaster commissioned a large series of product illustrations, logos, advertisements and packaging art. During this time, he continued to work with Savoy on major glass projects for architectural installations across the nation.
Raphael’s work has been in many publications such as “A Concise History of Posters”, “Eureka” and “The Art of Rock.” His work has been shown in the Museums of Modern Art in New York, San Francisco and San Diego. A Schnepf poster was recently chosen to represent the 60’s art poster era at the reopening of the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. His work has been in many art exhibitions from the early 60’s to the present.
As well as his commercial art career Raphael has also taught workshops and college classes in lettering design, Illustration, Airbrush and Glass painting. He now has airbrush & glass painting videos. After a recent trip to Italy, Raphael has started a new series of paintings that he plans to show within the next year (see art portfolio on his website). The summer of 2004 brought an outdoor mural and an indoor mural. He has also been working on a series of acrylic and airbrush paintings and pastel and color pencil works.
LINKS | A.D. COOK FINE ART | MYSPACE
ADVERTISE | CAFEPRESS | RECOMMENDED READING
AIRSOURCE: The Official AirbrushTour Store
January 5th, 2006 05:44
Hey Ad! You gonna be coming to NC? You’ll have to stop by. I’ll cook you folks my infamous chicken marsala. You can dine on my lovely backporch.
But be warned, this ain’t no fancy art studio. It’s quite rustic and humble.
January 6th, 2006 15:10
We’ll definately be in your area sometime - not sure when.., probably late summer or fall. It would be great to finally meet, and the infamous chicken marsala sounds great! Rustic and hmble sounds perfect.