I never set out to run a business. I set out to paint.
Like a lot of people, I spent years taking holiday photos that sat on my phone, rarely looked at again. Then one day I picked up a watercolor brush and started painting from them instead. Something shifted. The act of painting a place — really looking at it, mixing the colours, finding the light — made me feel connected to my travels in a way a photograph never quite did.
That's how Linda Johnson Art began. A hobby. A woman over 50 with a brush, some paint, and a growing collection of travel memories she wanted to do something meaningful with.
Painting the Places I've Been
My postcards aren't a product line designed in a studio. They're a travel journal in watercolor. Each painting starts with a place I've actually visited — somewhere in Australia that stopped me in my tracks. The Great Barrier Reef. Far North Queensland. The colours and textures that you only really see when you slow down and look.
I paint one image at a time, in watercolor, from my own holiday photos. Then I design it into a postcard — something you can hold, send, or keep. It's a slow process, and that's the point. Each card carries the memory of being there.
Why Watercolor?
Watercolor suits Australian light in a way I find hard to explain but easy to see. The transparency of the pigment, the way colour blooms on wet paper, the luminosity you get when the white of the card shows through — it captures the shimmer of tropical water and the softness of Queensland skies better than any other medium I've tried.
It's also wonderfully unpredictable. You set the paint down and it does something unexpected, and sometimes that accident is the best part of the painting. Travel is like that too.
A Hobby Turned Business — Later in Life
Starting a business in your 50s is its own kind of adventure. There's no rulebook, and honestly, that suits me. I'm not trying to be a big brand. I'm trying to share something I love — Australian places, painted by hand, turned into postcards that people can actually use and enjoy.
If you've ever come back from a trip and wished you had something more personal than a fridge magnet to remember it by, that's exactly what these postcards are for. They're for the travellers, the art lovers, and anyone who's ever looked at a beautiful place and wanted to hold onto it a little longer.
Browse the collection of hand-painted Australian watercolor postcards in the shop — each one a place I've been, painted just for you.