Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. You can hide in the sun till you see the light.

Christ Crowned with Thorns, 2025

Acrylic on 30” x 20” illustration board

Visualizing how this scene would look in current-day America by asking who would be tasked to carry out the act as well as who would cheer it on while turned away from who it’s being done to. A challenging painting for difficult times.

My inspiration for this, beyond just seeing what is happening every day in our country, was the early 1600’s painting of the same name by Dirck van Baburen which imagined the scene for that time with figures in contemporary Dutch clothing and armor. It speaks to both the timelessness of the Christ story as well as how society continues to repeat its darker tendencies. I was looking at it in the Nelson-Atkins Museum several months ago and the visual for a current-day iteration instantly hit my mind.

And now for something lighter:

Study of Antoine Coysevox’ Bust of Madame du Vaucel

Watercolor on 7” x 10” paper

After spending a few weeks working on an acrylic painting I worked this up to get back in the swing with watercolors and also to do something purely for beauty as a palette cleanser. The bust is carved out of marble and is part of the St Louis Art Museum’s collection. I’ve slowly come to admire sculpture more than I used to and I was especially blown away by both her braid and the lace of her dress, thinking about the exquisitely steady hand that Coysevox must have had to carve them.

Card subject to change.

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My wife Katy’s latest book Oldest Kansas City is now ready for preorder! She’s worked really hard on this, doing deep research in all corners of the city to find as many gems and stories as possible.

Here’s the description:

If you’ve met Katy you know exactly what her unique energy is all about and how passionate she gets telling the stories of others. Preorders are really important to a book’s success, so it would mean a lot to us if you could get one for yourself. They start shipping on September 1st. Thanks!

I finished listening to the audiobook for Michael Connelly’s Two Kinds of Truth while working over the last several days. I know I say this every time I talk about Connelly’s ‘Bosch Universe’ books, but while they’re not always good in my eyes they’re at the very least listenable. I like having dialogue while I’m working, whether it’s podcasts or audiobooks and the Connelly stuff is the spoken word version of easy listening and while that may sound damning, I swear for me that’s a compliment. Parts of this were used in the Bosch shows but it differed enough to keep me from checking out. It follows Harry Bosch working a few different cases, one taking down a pill mill, another defending one of his own cases from decades earlier, and also a missing persons case. These post-2016 Connelly books have been fascinating, watching both the author and his characters struggle with a very different worldview where the cops and the system they represent aren’t always the good guys, and frequently seeming to be less and less so.

I picked up Raging Clouds by Yudori without knowing much of anything about it beyond the gorgeous art and I was truly floored by the experience. Set in 1700’s Netherlands, it’s about a young bride bristling at her role in her society and her own house while actively dreaming of being able to fly free. Her dreams come to fruition as she comes to create a hot air balloon but her husband sees the invention as a way to further himself. She also has to contend with her husband’s new mistress slave, who reveals very uncomfortable truths about herself. Like, yeah, this book is a JOURNEY and it’s beautiful to look at.

On the other end of the spectrum Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre by Tom Scioli is a thing I can’t believe exists but I’m so damn happy it does. The Great Gatsby uses his fortune to build a private army to thwart Godzilla consisting of Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, the Time Machinist, Count Dracula and more! It’s wonderfully ludicrous with moments like the Eiffel Tower being electrified in an effort to kill Godzilla, Gatsby being hit by an enlarging ray to truly become The Great Gatsby, and someone getting thrown into the sun. The biggest of big dumb funs!

If you want to see something truly magical, go 36 minutes in on this episode of The Midnight Special and watch the full performance by The Whispers. The whole show is fantastic (don’t miss the Lockers performance either!), but my gosh this is seven minutes of heaven.

We live in an old house, built around 100 years ago, and a lot of our windows are original construction. While that may not be the most energy or climate-efficient thing, they’re pretty magical when it gets really humid outside and they fog up. The flowers in the window box look like incredible Impressionist paintings and I’ll find myself just staring at them in awe.

Love you more,Rob