Rapha Johannsen

I spent a good chunk of my career building tech startups. Including, and I am genuinely not making this up, a virtual reality in-flight entertainment system. The idea was that you'd put on a VR headset on a plane and forget you were on a plane. We made it. People tried it. We pivoted.

I built a few of those, with the kind of conviction only a 26-year-old founder can summon. None of them became unicorns. All of them taught me something. Mostly that I was tired.

Did the work. Fixed some of the things. Discovered, with the kind of clarity you only get when you stop trying to be useful, that I did not actually want to be a tech founder anymore. I wanted to retire from that entire genre and start painting instead.

So I did. Retiring at 30-something is not technically retirement, but I'm comfortable with the word.

Before paintings there were rugs. And bed sheets. And small objects that didn't necessarily need to exist, but felt better than the alternative, which was answering emails. The aesthetic showed up here first. Soft palette, big shapes, an opinion about what a room should feel like.

Bought paint. Bought canvas. Ruined a perfectly good white shirt. Did not put the brush down for what is now approximately a year and counting. The six series began here — Own Your Path, Golden Path, New Beginning, Journey Man, Energy of the South, and the one called On Mondays, you'll find me on the beach.