This work was inspired by the artist’s recent reading of Octavia Butler’s Parable duology. The novels follow Lauren Olamina, a Black woman inflicted with a disability, as she treks through an apocalyptic southern California reeling from the effects of sudden climate change. All the while, Olamina fosters a religious movement called Earthseed, whose purpose is to gather like-minded individuals into a consolidated effort in order to enable humanity to take its next evolutionary step by voyaging into space. In this mural, humanity has fulfilled Earthseed’s destiny and has built a colony among the stars. The colony orbits an immense tree that facilitates life in a huge hyper-futuristic city.
Timothy Short was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia, and moved to Atlanta in order to attend Georgia State and pursue art in 2011. Predominantly an oil painter, Tim constructs imaginative narrative spaces always centering on the Black figure. These stories are meant to venerate the everyday people close to him, often chosen as models for his work, using cosmological and celestial imagery. By detailing the subjects of the works in darker palettes, associations of lighter colors and spaces with inherent goodness or divinity are subverted and a metaphysical iconography is granted to the Blackness of these universes. Timothy’s inspirations are Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Jordan Casteel amongst many other painters, a host of manga and comics, and great Black music.
“The robot is a reference to the Flying Lotus song, “Golden Diva”. Flying Lotus received plenty of airplay on Adult Swim and I was introduced to and inspired by his work because of Adult Swim.”
