AN ABSURD POP OF COLOR
- Rick Schenk
- Oct 7, 2025
- 19 min read
In an inspiring and slightly unhinged conversation between siblings, Ricky Schenk interviews multimedia artist Amadea Schenk.
This candid chat reveals Amadea’s early artistic memories, sources of inspiration, affection for color story and inviting texture, and the creative process behind her thoughtful works. Light a cigarette and enjoy this insightful glimpse into the world of fiber artistry. Welcome to Ama's jungle.
"I became a softer person."
RS Why don't you tell me who you are? How do we know each other? And a little bit about your artistic output.
AS My name is Amadea Schenk, your sister. I'm three years older. I'm a fiber artist. But I have done all kinds of different arts and turned crafts into art.
RS Do you remember the first piece of art that you ever made in a meaningful way?
AS I remember the first piece of art that you made that was meaningful to me.
RS You know, that's why I thought to write that question. Because it's like I'm the artist, you know what I mean and I have this origin piece of artwork that is cool. I didn't know if you did.
AS No. And I remember the first piece of art you made.
RS Yeah, do you want to say what that is?
AS I do want to. I would also like to say for the record that I don't have any memories before I was 10 years old.
RS Oh, really?
AS Few, very few.
I don't remember anything that I made, but I do remember we were on one of our summer weird road trips where we just drove east, because we were already west. It was probably 1991 or ‘92 .
RS Do you think maybe it was the road trip that we have that photo from where Mom has a Fanny pack?
AS I also had a Fanny pack and I was crying and wearing a shirt with bicycles on it. And that's probably why I was crying.
RS Ok. And you have like, an unauthorized biography, I think, of Guns N Roses.
AS But it was definitely after Use Your Illusion came out, which I think was ‘91 . So we were on a road trip, and our parents were driving, I guess. I was in love with Duff McKagan, he was the bass player. And you drew him on notebook paper with a ballpoint pen. It was fucking dope. It was rad.
RS You have claimed over the years to have this drawing, but you don't know where it is. I have never seen it again. But I do remember that he's playing the bass. And he was wearing a CBGB tee shirt, which is great for me, because it gives me a New York connection at that age. I would love to see it if you can find it.
AS I don't know if I have it, because if I had found it, I would have already framed it. I knew that you were drawing because I was already drawing.
RS I do remember you designing a fabulous dress?
AS Oh, oh, shit. That's what I was doing.
RS Would you have been trying to draw a dress for a doll at that point, though, or for a human being?
AS I didn't have dolls. I didn't fuck with dolls.
RS What do you mean you didn't fuck with dolls? You had Hot Look dolls and Barbie dolls.
AS Those are models. I was drawing fashion. I wasn't drawing baby doll dresses for a weird fucking baby haunted doll.
RS I didn't say baby doll, I just said Hot Looks and Barbies. Those are fashion dolls.
AS Yeah, that is based on human beings. Like models. I did design. I wanted to be a fashion designer so bad. It was like the coolest thing in the world. And I would design these, um, I believe now you would call it today maybe a body con dress.
RS Clothing for escorts is what we would call that today. Blumarine girls.
AS You don't want to know what I was wearing at the time. There was a store called $5 clothing store. That was the name of it. Each item was $5, and we were poor. So mom was on board with me shopping at the store. And the store was informed by what was cool at the time, which was like, Kelly Bundy style.
RS Fuck yeah.
AS Christina Applegate was my fashion icon. I was wearing a lot of very scrunchy mini skirts, crop tops that tied. The skirt that was attached to the bike short.
RS Sure, with a crimped side pony. What's inspiring your latest work?
AS Well, I haven't started it yet. So can I answer this question?
RS Yeah. Answer in any way you want.
"All I care about now is texture, line, and color. I want to tell stories that way instead, I don't want it to be representational."
AS I’ll tell you about my latest work seen by people.It was a show at Muhammad Ali Center. That was a group show with women artists. There were seven walls, there were seven artists, and everyone got to do whatever they wanted. What I did was multimedia. It was some fiber art combined with some graphic design. I used some sign materials. I work in a sign shop. I did some printing, I did some gold leafing. The theme of it was microaggressions in everyday life that women have to deal with.The work that I'm planning is much more personal. What I had done before was more of a social commentary about being a woman in the world trying to do stuff. And now I'm looking more at interpersonal relationships And I'm planning some soft sculpture.
RS Do you look to art for inspiration? What artists have influenced you the most?
AS In general, any artists that do self-portraiture have been huge influences on me, like Frida Kahlo. Because the way she does it, it's always in context, it's not just like, “I'm gonna make myself look pretty”. There's always something happening.
So in my show at the Ali Center, I included two self-portraits that I had done previously. One was probably like 15 years before, and one was like five years before. I named them for the show “Self-portrait that I should have made myself look prettier one and two”. Because both of the self-portraits that I did, someone saw them and said, “You’re way prettier than that. Why did you make yourself look like that?” And I feel that's such a weird thing for someone to say, and it works with the theme of my show, which was microaggression in general against women.
RS I have to say that Frida Kahlo is a real blind spot for me as an artist. Obviously, I'm familiar with the master works, and I know about her house, but I never even saw that movie or anything, like, I don't know anything about her except for that. It doesn't make any sense that I don't know her, because my work looks like I would know her.
What's insane is that if you just do a Google image search for “Frida Kahlo”, there's plenty of photographs of her and plenty of her work. But more than either of those things, there's modern design work of Frida Kahlo portraits that other people have done, where they have taken it upon themselves to make her very sexy, which is exactly what you're saying. A lot of what I'm actually seeing here are just pictures of Salma Hiyak. You know what I mean, like the same way that a lot of people think that pictures of Selena are J Lo.
I'm constantly working on my personal style on Pinterest, and it came to a point where they were giving me Elvis. And do you know there are more pictures of AI “fixing” Elvis than there are of Elvis on Pinterest now? Cause there are all these AI pictures of Elvis that look so realistic, but he has a little bit of facial hair, Elvis couldn't grow any facial hair. Pictures of Elvis sub 8% body fat, and it's like, “I'm sorry that Elvis Presley isn't hot enough for you in 2025”.You know, it's not my decade. Maybe in ten more years, I just have a feeling. I'm really looking forward to the 2030s.
Who is an artist you would most like to own a piece from and display in your home? And then secondly, who is an artist that you love, but would definitely not feature in your home?
AS There's a guy on Instagram. His name is Glenn Martin Taylor.
RS I'll look him up.
AS And he does mixed media ceramics, found object, trauma informed. It's like art therapy.
RS Like this hand, wired to a grandma plate is very fucking cool.
AS Yeah. I will add also that I'm a poet in addition to being a visual artist. I've been working on a poetry collection. It's just a chapbook, right? Where it's two different stories. If you look at it this way, you get this. If you flip it upside down, you get the other thing. And it was originally just gonna be one, called “A History of Sadness”. Depression poems, right? Me being very sad all the time.
RS Do you write only when you're depressed? Or do you write all the time?
AS No, not only when I'm depressed. But historically, I have been depressed when I write poetry. And I saw one of his pieces. So there was a plate, you know, like that you just saw probably. A plate was like, barbed wired together or something like that. And it had painted on it, it said, “ I cut open my heart and found a softer god”. It stuck in my head. So i'm like, cool, my collection is gonna be on one side called “A History of Sadness”. It was always gonna be. And then if you flip it over, it can be called “A softer god”. And those are gonna be poems I wrote after I started therapy, and when I started understanding more what was going on. And when I became a softer person, which I have.
That is just one answer, perhaps, of who influenced me. I would love to have a Frida Kahlo hanging in my house. But that dude, I would love one of those, that's the one.
What was the other question? Who do I love, but I wouldn't want? I don't know. I'm like if you give me anything worth money, I'll take it!
RS This is not about money. You wouldn't be able to sell this painting. I'm sorry, that was too leading to say painting.
AS Andrew Wyeth. He did a self-portrait. And I've seen it in person, like there was a traveling show here. It's called The Revenant. And it's a self-portrait and it's all white, he looks like he's in the BeeGee’s or something.
RS Oh, yeah, weird. It's very weird. He does look like he's in the BeeGee’s.
AS The lights are amazing, right? I would have that if I should have one from a famous person, one painting.
RS That's a great choice for your house, too. I must say.
AS I don't want, like, a Flemish fruit bowl painting, even though I will stare at it for an hour.
RS No. What? Come on. That's tomfoolery. I would. What I mean, everyone that I know that paints seriously, all has the same person that they want to emulate, and that’s Roberto Ferri. He's alive. He is the painter of all things Vatican related right now. He's like 40. He is inarguably a brilliant painter. I love his work. His work is what I saw that made me finally buy oil paint. I thought that I was gonna paint like that. But the thing is that I would rather die than put some fucking weird biblical thing, that looks like it goes in the liner notes of a tool album, in the space that I occupy. I don't want something narrative and gothy about good and evil. Almost everyone that I know looks at that as the highest art that exists, because the technique is so strong.
AS I think that I have felt that way. Okay, you know, I used to really like Hieronymous Bosch.
RS Yeah, you know what Hieronymous Bosch is? If you ask me that question. I would want a Henry Darger in my house.
AS I'm not an art historian.. I don't know how to answer this question. Because I like the things that I like.
RS Sure, but you would like Henry Darger. I'm sort of surprised that you don't know who that is. You might fall in love with this person's story.
AS I can't afford to fall in love anymore.
RS I thought you just fell in love.
AS That's what I'm saying.
RS What role does color play in your work? And how has your relationship with color evolved over time?
AS I have a complicated relationship with color because my professional job requires me to match brand colors. They're just like, “Oh, this is supposed to match this color, come back here under this fluorescent light and look at it and tell us if it matches.” And then suddenly the weight is on me to be like, “yeah, this is the right one”, even though I know that's not the lighting it's gonna be under. So color has been stressing me out for the last five years. But to talk about how I personally feel about color. I personally love a super limited color palette in anything I do. Because, for one thing, you keep track of what you're doing. But what I always do, no matter what, in the last five years or so, I like to do a neutral palette and I always add a pop of insane color, like safety orange. You know that thing in my living room, strings tied to a stick. And there was just its own neutral colors, different textures, different strings. And I have that dark green, captured by a leather strap. But I also have one string of safety orange hidden behind there. And my thing is to just have like an absurd pop of color. I really like limitations. If it's a color palette, that's better. Give me like three colors to work with. Three colors of yarn and a pop, right? I'm gonna pop that fucking pop.
RS So do you care if the other colors are harmonious as long as they're all…
AS All analogous colors generally.
RS So it's like grey, taupe, tan.
AS Yeah, I'm not using any greys, but yes.
RS Well, what do you have against grey? I'm right there with you, but what do you like about tan that you don't like about grey?
AS I need things to be warm. My least favorite color since I've been born is blue. I don't understand people who think that blue is their favorite color. Especially like a royal blue does not move me. But if you give me oranges and yellows and tans, god, I love it.
RS I love beige. I like a french grey. I like the grey on an animal, if you see a dove.
AS Yes, but you know how everyone started painting everything grey?
RS Yeah, I fucking hate it. I was so worried that I was gonna have to move into this place where everything is grey, the walls are grey, I hate that fucking grey flooring, that luxury vinyl plank that they put in everywhere, you know, from 2018 that was grey. Are you familiar with the crystal house, Baccarat? Baccarat is a, like, 200 year old chandelier maker. The thing about Baccarat is that they always hide a red crystal in something.
AS That's what I always do. Safety orange! I'm gonna make a chair. I’m gonna refurb this metal chair that Trav was going to throw away. I'm not gonna describe to you what I was gonna do. I'm just gonna run one line of crazy orange through just cream, one line where it'll almost disappear. That's the kind of way I like to add color.
RS That's pretty great.
AS A signature. You know?
RS I remember I used to say my favorite color story was a cigarette. I loved white and brown and orange together and in the ratio too.
AS You know the best part about a cigarette?
RS What's that?
AS That tiny fuckin pop of neon orange,
RS When it's lit at the end? As a person that smoked for 20 plus years, I have not smoked in, um, over 3 years, I always used to have this vision, because I've always liked to scare myself. I used to walk at different times in my life, like all the time. And then I would always be smoking and walking. And I would look at the shadow of myself in the street, like I always thought it would be so scary if in the shadow of my cigarette, it got lit, like it had had an ember. It's that tiny orange in a shadow that would be so terrifying, like when you see a possum or a cat at night.
AS And it's that pop that I put into the most mundane. What do they call the principles of art? Line, shape, color, whatever. I love line, and texture more than anything. That's why I have become a fiber artist. I’m not good at drawing. I was doing the pumpkin thing the other day. I was like, I hate this. I'm the worst one here. I make the worst fucking pumpkins.
RS There’s no way that you make the worst pumpkins. Your pumpkins are so good.
AS Elise came over, and she was like, holy shit. That's so awesome. She called everyone to come around me and look at it. And it made me very uncomfortable because I was like, I think this is the worst pumpkin in the whole place because everyone is so talented. And when you're doing a representational thing on such a specific substrate, as a pumpkin, the people that are in there all the time, they don't have full time jobs and just go there and fuckin do it. They have their technique down, you know, and it looks so 3D and rad. And I'm in there trying to figure it out. That's why I just want to do abstract fiber art now. All I care about now is texture, line, and color. I want to tell stories that way instead, I don't want it to be representational.
RS What's the most deranged piece you've ever made? Which of your pieces would you be least comfortable seeing in your childhood bedroom?
AS One of my favorites and also made me feel completely fucking insane was the last successful oil painting that I did. It was only successful because I ruined it. It is a self-portrait. It's my favorite self-portrait that I've ever done. I hated it. It looked like shit, and I just put my hands in it and just started going up and down. I had been working on it for a couple of hours. It was all wet. I wasn't trying to do anything from a drawing or anything. I was looking in the mirror, doing alla prima painting on board, I don't paint on canvas…
RS I also hate painting on canvas.
AS I only paint on smooth boards. Yeah, it was just on like, a 12 by 12 cradled board. Limited color palette. Browns. And maybe like a coral. And whatever necessary blues or whatever I might need. But like, it's that handful of oil paint, right? I hadn’t oil painted in forever. And I was like, I'm just gonna look in the mirror and paint, and I hated it. I put my hands in it. Started moving ‘em. And it's my favorite painting of myself that I've ever made. And I would actually hang it in my house. Sometimes ruining it makes it.
RS You've mentioned, I think, more than any other thing, texture in the work that you'd like to be producing. Once you start the work that you plan to produce, do you think it'll come quickly? Or do you think it's going to be long? Now I'm excited to see it.
AS Once I start, I think it will come quickly. This is the difference with fiber art. There is actually a high level of not knowing, because I want to do something I haven't done before. For example, I want to tuft pieces that are in weird shapes and sew them together, see what it looks like. It's all experimentation. That's all I wanna do. I'm not gonna try to do exact measurements to make a shape, like I would if I was selling a dress or something. I want to organically stitch shit together and see what shape it makes. I am about the process.
RS And is the product designed to be touched?
AS Well, yeah, I make it out of soft things. So when I had the show at the Ali center, they had signs that said don't touch the artwork, obviously. I had to go in there several times, while it was up, and trim lint or fuzz off of it, because people touched it so much. And I'm like, no, I made it soft. I made it. People want to touch it, I understand that. It’s the point.
And then there are certain things I want to make with time. I wanna take helium balloons and knit tubes that will go over them. And the balloons hold them up until they run out of air. And the way they fall down becomes art. I want to use time and space, also, as a medium.
RS I love that. We'll have to talk more about that in the future, because that's not at all something that I want to do. You know what I mean, that's why I use walnut oil instead of linseed oil on the white, because I don't even want it to turn yellow.
AS Carving pumpkins! People are spending hours carving pumpkins that squirrels are going to eat, and then are going to rot. I tied strings to a fucking stick and just did it by how it was affecting me at the time. And I look at this thing regularly and feel something. Moreso than anything I've ever painted. And I know it sounds fucking insane, like it’s just strings tied to a stick. I'm like, this is my, like, a masterpiece right here, some strings tied to a stick.
RS Reddit art forums are like, “how can I fix this? How can I work on this?” And I don't often comment, but usually, when I do, I'm like, “throw it away and don't ever think of it again.”
AS Throw it away,
RS Throw it away and start again. Stop, throw your erasers away before you do anything. And then draw it again and throw that away and draw that again and throw that away. And then wait 20 years. When you're still not happy with any of this. that's the thing about representational artwork, It's such a con. Oh, my god. Because also there's this fucking guy on Instagram who paints photorealism, where i'm like, if you have that photo printed on a canvas, there's 0% chance you want to hang that in your house. Where does that go?
AS Like a fucking photo of a dumb shit.
RS Yeah, it's a photo of a pretty girl in water, and like, what's the point of that? Because all of a sudden, the only thing important about it is technique
AS If you're gonna paint a realistic photo, paint an ugly person.
RS I paint models, I paint beautiful people.
AS …in interesting ways.
RS But like I'm not interested in recreating a photo, I'm interested in what the paint does and that's why I don't use acrylic. I was at the art store today at Blick and, god bless those people, they train them to be all up in your business.“So what are you working on?” This kid, and he was very sweet. I'm such a riddle. And if you ask me the right question, I will fall in love with you within seconds. But if you ask me the wrong question, I'm locked down. And he's like, “What are you working on?”. And I’m holding oil paint and like three brushes. I'm like, “painting”. And he's like, “oh, what do you paint? What are you painting this time?” And I was like, “I've been doing the same painting all year”. And he was like, “oh, you've been working on a painting all year”. And I was like, “no, I think I'm on the 24th one, but it's the same, I do the same painting”. Then he was like, “What do you paint?” And I was like, “Portraits”. And he is like, “portraits?, I think faces are hard”. And I'm like what the fuck?Okay, you're talking to a grown ass artist at this point, young man. You sell Old Holland paint for like $98 a tube. I think he was just a young artist, you just don't know anything yet. I was like, I've been painting for 25 years. And then I realized later that that's conservative. I've been painting with intent for longer than 25 years, and i've never stopped, you know, like, oh, fuck, i'm allowed to say whatever the fuck I want about painting.
AS As soon as I quit doing traditional media and doing fiber art and when you say fiber art to people,they stop listening. And they're like, oh, you're not painting? Whatever. Okay, oh, are you knitting a sweater? And I'm not even talking about tying strings to sticks. Because at this point, I'm like trying to figure out how to do weird fucking sculptural shit, make a fucking panopticon, whatever, I have ideas, ok? It's conceptual art instead of representational, it's so much more freeing. Remember that piece with Mia Zapata, with the rug tufted over and the rips to show her face because she was murdered? I ripped it out because I was listening to her song about sexual violence, before she was murdered, she was making songs about sexual violence, against women. So it’s like a ripped rug, and her face is showing through. Like, the painting’s not good.
RS I will defend representational artwork. I'm not trying to say anything with these things I'm trying to make, what I’d like is to make someone happy with them.
AS No, no, no. Your work is gorgeous, because it is a person, you know, in a way they’ve never seen themselves.
RS Well, thank you. About that.
AS I've drawn people, they’ve paid me to illustrate them, and they're like, oh, my god, it's fucking amazing, no one has ever drawn me. No one has ever drawn me. I’ve drawn like a million people. People have written songs about me. People have written poems about me, and stories. But nobody’s ever painted me, and I would love to see it. And you know me, so that will come out.
RS Well, I thought you were, I don't know, scared that I would actually paint you. So I thought maybe you weren't there. Maybe you were being too precious about the photograph too. I feel good because I don't think I can fuck it up too bad at this point. It's like with tattooing. There's no tattoo in the world that I can't do. And obviously somebody will do every single one of those tattoos better. But I know for a fact, if you tell me to do one, I can do it great. And if you tell me to copy somebody else's, I can do that great, too. That’s where I am with these paintings.
AS
(Has to leave the conversation abruptly, this is not unusual.)
You can follow Amadea on Instagram @_murderhouse_
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