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 counter-culture, creating psychedelic art, graphics, music posters and illustrations. After seeing his poster for the 1967 Summer of Love, Chet Helms of 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. Rediscovering the airbrush, he developed a photo-real style, creating images for book and record jackets, murals, packaging, and posters. In the mid 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 glass work has been featured in Glass Art and other magazines. His work is included in the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It has also been in shows in the Modern Art Museums of San Francisco and San Diego. There is a show of 60s posters including some of his at the Denver Art Museum running this spring and summer. 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 DVDs (see videos on this website). Now that the new studio in Milwaukie is finished, he is holding airbrush workshops periodically. After a recent trip to Italy, 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. He has most recently begun a series of Goddess paintings for an upcoming publication. Since 2007 Raphael has been working on a series of fused and painted glass pieces that can be found under "new painted" on this site.