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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you.

Sometimes a painting surprises me and this piece of Brody King and Bandido did just that. I went in with an intention for a general vibe to it, an approach more than anything and then I’d play jazz along the way to feed into all of that. With a composition like this, where there’s two equal figures, the challenge is finding a way to let each of them shine without detracting from the other. (Would you be surprised to find out I’ve had people in the past pull out rulers because they thought someone else was too prominent in a painting?) For this one, I put an emphasis on Bandido by adding that glow to his hand doing the finger-gun and then went more stylistic with Brody King.

By limiting the color palette and incorporating the splattered masking fluid throughout, they’re still together in the composition without overpowering one another. Circling back to the personal surprise aspect of this and the color palette, I added some Opera Rose to the primer coat stage, which is that ethereal pink making its way through. I put it in there just as an instinct, going for that vibe I wanted and man it made this piece sing. Sometimes it’s good to trust an instinct!

Card subject to change.

Rob’s Art on ShopAEW
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Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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Rob’s prints and shirts at Pro Wrestling Tees
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Bluesky
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Katy’s book Oldest Kansas City

‘Poplars, Sunset at Eragny’ by Camille Pissarro, 1894

What I love about looking at an Impressionist painting in person, like with this Pissarro piece exhibited at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, is looking at how sculptural the brush strokes are and what that adds to the overall feeling. As the title says, the story of this is of how the sun is shining through trees without their leaves. Maybe because it’s fall now here in Kansas City and the trees are starting to shed their leaves, the air is cool and damp, it’s easy for me to transport right into this and see it through Pissarro’s eyes.

Here’s a detail I took from an angle so that you can see just how thickly the paint was applied and how each stroke of the brush moves along with the light amid the clouds. It adds both a serenity and a whimsy to the painting, I feel. As an artist, it’s also quite wonderful to study Pissarro’s decision-making, the chunky marks acting as a roadmap to how he went about creating this.

The whispy branches of the bare trees were added in last and I genuinely appreciate how he left them looking almost sketchy and not fully filled in, allowing some of the color from the sky to poke through. It evokes the feeling of how this scene would look in person through both atmospheric distortion and the blurring of the human eye, as you can see that they’re more defined below the timber line.

Occasionally someone will tell me that they don’t know how to appreciate art, thinking that you need both an art history degree and a psychology degree to understand it all. That couldn’t be further from the truth! It really all comes down to whether you like looking at a work of art or not. If you like it, then to you it’s good art. That’s the introduction, that’s the way in, and once you have that you can either let it sit there (which is wonderful unto itself) or you can start asking yourself more questions like what about it you like, or what you’re feeling looking at it. It’s your own journey and gosh that’s beautiful.

This week at the Nelson-Atkins Museum here in Kansas City there’s a gorgeous installation in the main hall called ‘In Memory Of’ by Porfirio Gutierrez. It’s a representation of an ancestral Zapotec tomb, with the candles memorializing those who have died crossing the Mexican/ US border and the candles symbolizing migratory butterflies. It stopped me in my tracks seeing it and deeply moved me as I learned what each component speaks to.

At its base, viewers are encouraged to leave notes to their loved ones who have passed. At the end of the Dia de Los Muertos period, all of the notes will be burnt as is custom. I noticed a lot of different languages and types of messages, all of them full of genuine emotions.

I left one for my Grandpa, who passed when I was relatively young.

Love you more,
Rob