Heroine draws from the artist's interest in the narratives of women activists and the importance of honoring heroic ancestors—both within his own family and across communities. Shrobe considers figures like Mary McLeod Bethune, who courageously stood against white supremacy, racism, and racial violence. This work also honors the everyday heroes in communities by depicting them as figures of aesthetic power, grace, and dignity—free-floating beings who exist within futures they shape for themselves, suggested through her contemplative, introspective gaze.

These characters emerge from the artist's mining of lived experience, family archives, art historical references, and ancestral narratives. They exist as hybridized figures operating across multiple registers. By resisting strict realism, Shrobe allows their identities to remain elusive, fragmented, and fluid, reflecting the complexities of human experience while emphasizing the universality of their emotions, histories, and aspirations. Centering Blackness becomes another way to articulate this universality. The oval compositions function as portals into speculative futures that imagine new possibilities of freedom and autonomy. Referencing the history of classical portraiture, the oval frame becomes a meditation on time, identity, and humanity, opening into liminal and imagined spaces.