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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Only one of us can ride forever, so you and I can't ride together. Can't live or can't die together, all we can do is collide together.

I feel like this is my very best wrestling painting to date. I brought together all of my skills and techniques on this and it sings. A sense of depth, an energy and movement, and all in service of the composition telling the story of the magic that happens when Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada face off.

Kenny’s back foot is slightly out of frame, making his movement feel explosive. Instead of taking a step back, Okada is moving forward to combat his storied rival. There’s splattered highlights immediately above the ring canvas, speaking to the energy of what’s happening in the squared circle.

I’ve spent over a dozen years studying and visually translating the language of professional wrestling. Each painting informs the next one, each in communication with every one before and they’re all talking here.

This is a meaningful work for me and I hope that comes through when you see it.

Card subject to change.

If you’re unfamiliar, I change my signature every year and this is my new one. It’s a four panel grid, with the top two panels being my initials and the bottom two the year. So:

RS

26

So every time you see last year’s in the coming months you’ll get an idea for about how far ahead I work!

I think I started doing this in 2011, so…15 years this year! Next year I’ll hit my 30 year anniversary as a professional artist which equally feels like a blink of an eye and several lifetimes ago.

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
Cara
YouTube
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Katy’s book Oldest Kansas City

190 pieces in total between rasslin art, personal fine art paintings, studies, warmups, a short comic book story and development work for a graphic novel that I can’t quite shape up yet. Not bad. I had far more pieces that accomplished what I set out to do than ones which fell short, so hooray for therapy!

That comes out to more than three a week, a nice accomplishment since the All In Texas piece took a month and the Omega vs Okada took about ten days. “How long does it take you to make a painting?” Depends on the painting!

I’m fortunate to have the luxury of time for personal work, as that allows me the freedom to experiment and grow. That feeds back into my commercial work, as I think you can see from this year’s output, but I’m also able to stay interested in my work and fulfilled by it. I lost that a couple years ago, which drove my career shift and since then I’ve been on a journey to rediscover my love for art.

I feel like I’m on the right path again, and I thank you for being on it with me.

On Sunday, Katy made these panettone French toast waffles and they were so good I asked her to write up her recipe for them:

Panettone French Toast Waffles

Preheat your waffle maker. Beat the eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon and salt together in a wide, shallow bowl. Dip a slice of panettone into the egg mixture and flip, coating both sides.

Spray your waffle iron with a bit of nonstick cooking spray. Let the excess custard mixture drip off the bread, then place a slice in the waffle iron. Close the iron and let it cook for ~5 minutes (similar to how you’d prepare a Belgian waffle). Once ready, top with butter and syrup!

Note: We’re making another batch of these this week and I’m going to add some freshly grated orange zest to the custard mix. The panettone we use is almond, cranberry and orange, and I want to make the orange flavor pop even more.

Enjoy!

(Recipe adapted from David Lebovitz’s Panettone French Toast)

If you haven’t heard the story before, the first Christmas Katy and I lived together she wanted to surprise me with a breakfast. She hyped it up for a couple weeks and made me promise to not look in the fridge and spoil the surprise. While she was cooking she made me stay in another room, and then blindfolded me and led me to the table. She took the blindfold off and…it was French toast.

Friend, I all-caps HATE French toast.

I was stuck, because she was so elated to have done this meal and I felt like I just had to eat this. See, it’s a textural thing for me. I can’t do it. I tried. She was sitting right next to me and noticed I wasn’t eating it very fast. I hung my head and mumbled out, “I…I hate French toast…”

Flash forward 19 years and we finally found the solution: The waffle iron changes the texture and now I can fully enjoy it. And these are AWESOME. It’s a whole new world.

Love you more,
Rob