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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Remember their views are not the gospel truth.

It’s exciting when I feel like I leveled up on a painting and that’s what happened with this new Mercedes Mone piece. I’ve made portraits of her for over a decade now and her distinctive look and energy always gives me so much to work with. I never have to find a way into a painting of her, you know? But something clicked this time around.

The likeness, the composition, the color palette, the techniques, all of them came together this time around. You know when you’re in the zone on a video game or a sport or something like that and everything’s just…working? That happened this time around. I like to criticize myself into oblivion or suffer from analysis paralysis, but I’m taking the win here. This is one of the paintings that worked.

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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Girl With a Newspaper by Isabel Bishop

I’m embarrassed to admit I was unfamiliar with Isabel Bishop’s work until seeing one of her paintings a couple months ago at the St Louis Museum of Art. She’s truly one of the great American painters of the early-to-mid 1900’s, right there with Thomas Hart Benton. Her stylistic-yet-subdued, heavily-textured yet ethereal works really stay embedded in my imagination.

This piece, Girl With a Newspaper, is displayed here in Kansas City at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. I don’t know if it’s been displayed for a while and I just now noticed it or if it’s new to the public collection but I really adore it.

When I was looking it up, I found out that Bishop also did some etchings of the same shot. I’m not sure if these were in preparation for the painting or that the scene was simply something she revisited in a different medium, but it’s cool to compare and contrast them.

Back in May I brought out the coleus I had wintered. It promptly dropped all but one leaf and nearly died off! I had to trim off the one limb that stayed green and replanted it and slowly it took root and started sprouting out new leaves. And more leaves. And more leaves. And flowers.

Here’s the mighty beast it’s grown to be, four months later as we approach the end of the season. You can see another variety behind it with more yellow-green leaves that had the same humble beginnings. Here’s a better look at that in all its glory:

Gorgeous, right?

I have three varieties total now that I have fun plans for next year, now that I know how easy they are to care for in the cold months. I’ll also bring them out a few weeks later to reduce the shock, or maybe do the thing of keeping them in pots and acclimating them to the outdoors by bringing them out during the day and then back in at night for a couple weeks.

Plants, man. I dig ‘em.

Love you more,
Rob