Painting Timbaland: A Colorblind Artist’s Vision In Virginia Beach

A hometown tribute doesn’t happen by accident. We sit down with muralist Trevor Lucas to unpack the fast-moving journey from a Nashville job site to a Virginia Beach wall, where a bold portrait of Timbaland now anchors a citywide celebration. The commission came through the ViBe District’s mural festival, but the heart of the story is how sound, memory, and intuition converged to shape a piece that feels as musical as it looks.

Trevor shares how the mid-90s wave—Genuine’s Pony, Missy’s era, the Static Major collaborations—trained his eye to carve space and rhythm into portraiture. He explains the realities of a six-and-a-half-day turnaround, the push and pull between a client’s brief and an artist’s instinct, and what it means to honor a living legend with a piece the community can own. The twist arrives in color: working without his usual “color council,” Trevor built a concept dominated by blue. Only later did research into synesthesia suggest that Timbaland often “sees” blue when he crafts beats, transforming a risky choice into a perfect fit.

Across this conversation, we explore the craft behind large-scale public art: how ideas “download” mid-process, why texture matters as much as likeness, and how a mural can translate a producer’s sonic fingerprint into shape and hue. It’s a rare look at the creative mind under deadline, navigating uncertainty, and finding resonance where you least expect it. If you’re curious about the intersection of music, design, and place—especially how a city gives flowers to one of its own—you’ll feel the pulse in every brushstroke. Listen, share with a friend who loves Timbaland, and leave a review to help more people discover the art behind the sound.

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Transcript

Meet Trevor Lucas

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello, I'm Al Neely with Neely Media, and today we have Trevor Lucas. He's been contracted to do the Timberland mural and Virginia Beach. It's Timberland dedication weekend, and there's a whole lot of activities going on in the city. Um Let's talk about the mural. I've seen it, it's beautiful. Um, how did that come about?

Mural Fest And The Commission

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Well, um, I was doing a mural in Nashville at the time, and Kate Pittman of uh the Vibe District hit me up and she was telling me about the mural fest. And you know, the mural fest is basically where they have 10 artists, they do 10 different murals around Virginia Beach in the Vibe District area. But the caveat was there's a celebration of Timblin coming. And I think you would be a good artist to do a portrait of him for that uh that situation that's on its way. So when I got back, that's the first thing I started on was uh Timlin's mural. Okay. How much do you know about him? Oh I know a lot about Timlin. Okay. I mean, not personally, but you know, coming up, I would say, man, it was around '96, '97, uh, when the pony album, Genuine Pony album, came out. I was in Louisiana and I was, you know, prepping to go to the military, and uh it was a sound I had never heard before. So I became a fan really of the Timberland sound because it was so unique. I would listen to the stuff in the background. He would have unreleased music that'd be playing in the skits, and um, then it moved on to Missy, then it moved on in the Cole Ray, uh player like static major. I would listen to anybody that had a Timberland track. Sometimes I would just listen to his instrumentals. So I was a big fan early on, and then as things grew and as his

Discovering Timbaland’s Sound

SPEAKER_01 1:53

career started to expand, you know, it was just good to see it happen. And now it's good to be a part of celebrating him and giving him his flowers while he's here.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah. So the the mural, it took you, I think, six days to do.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

About six, six and a half days.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Is that a typical time frame for doing the mural?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

To be honest with you, it depends on the client and the situation. Sometimes, you know, if there's an opportunity there, yeah, and the client offers it to you, you don't want to say no. I know I can pull it off. Let's get it going. So I ain't gonna say typical, but it happens.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Okay. And where's the inspiration come from? Is I'm quite sure when they go, okay, I want you to do a mural, it just doesn't pop in your head, this is everything that I'm going to do. Um, is it that it takes a while for you to develop the the idea or the concept?

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Or honestly, man, uh sometimes, sometimes the client will tell you exactly what they're

Timeline And Process Realities

SPEAKER_01 2:55

looking for. But then sometimes they'll just give you an inspiration or they'll just let you know, you know, hey, this is the subject matter, go for it. Um, so whenever this was a situation where, you know, Timbaland, everybody knows Timberland. Um, but of course, I wanted to get a little bit deeper into what he sees when he makes music. So in doing so, I'd listen to a little bit of Timberlin's music. Um, I would kind of think back to certain things that influence me, like the uniqueness of it all. Um, but as I go, it's almost like a spiritual experience, man. I think it is a spiritual experience. Some things download as I'm going. You know, sometimes I get these unctions to do it this way or add this, add that. Like the whole thing with the if you look at the mural, the majority of it is blue.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Um, what a lot of people, well, people probably notice at this point. I'm a colorblind

Concept, Inspiration, And Flow

SPEAKER_01 3:49

artist. So my wife and my daughter usually kind of help me through the color section of things. I call them my color council. But I was in Nashville when I got this assignment. So when I was putting it together, I didn't have them there to kind of guide me through things. So I whipped it up, sent it on, and uh they ended up approving one of the concepts. When I got back home, um my wife was telling me, hey, you know, the one that they approved, this image is majority blue. So it kind of took me aback, but she was like, hey, they approved it, don't change it. So as I'm painted, it was kind of, I don't know, there was something kind of tugging at me. Like, I didn't know if I felt bad because I did it blue. I felt like maybe I should have put more color. And I was like, maybe it's just let me check and see what his favorite color is. So I looked it up. It didn't tell me what his favorite color was, but it did tell me that Timbaland has um, I forgot the name of the condition, but Pharrell has it too, where your um senses kind of merge. So

Blue, Colorblindness, And Synesthesia

SPEAKER_01 4:48

they can see sounds, they see colors when they make music. Timberland sees blue when he makes music. I wasn't aware of that at the time. But again, that download had me to design it in that way. It it felt right, you know? And that just happened to be a thing that worked in my favor.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah.