About the Mural

This mural by the artist called Arlin is on the corner of Central Avenue and 7th Street, on the west side of the building facing 7th Street.

A cheetah on the run takes up the entire wall, 100 feet wide and 17 feet high, leaping toward Central Avenue on your left. This painted cheetah is jumping over a very real row of blue rental bikes.

The cheetah is made up of sharp abstract strips of blue, bright yellow, hot pink, black and grey, that give off a feeling of movement and energy.

Up close, they’re just disjointed stripes of color. But from a distance the stripes blend into a fluid, graceful – and colorful – animal in motion.

The cheetah’s tan shadow outlines his shape, as if the sun were shining towards Central Avenue. When the sun starts heading west, the oak trees growing out of the sidewalk near the cheetah’s tail cast leafy shadows on the wall.

The cheetah’s right front paw almost touches the pavement, his left front paw stretches toward the corner of the building. His rear legs are jumping, about six feet off the ground. Bright yellow stripes make the cheetah’s muscles stand out, like the wide yellow lines ahead of him and behind him. These yellow lines trace his trajectory and add to the feeling of motion.

Arlin Graff is an artist and designer, born in Brazil but based in San Francisco, who has painted murals across the world. He often paints birds and wild animals, and his background in industrial design led to his unique, geometric style. Like many children, he used to build things and take them apart, which carries over into the deconstructed nature of his art, like this cheetah made of stripes.

Arlin is also a romantic, and proposed to his fiancé by painting the side of a truck with one of his signature birds and the words, “Will you marry me?”

This Cheetah is diagonally across the street from the Morean Arts Center on the northwest side of Central Avenue, and just one block east of the Chihuly Collection.