Deeply influenced by her childhood memories of growing up in Nairobi, Virginia Njeri Kamau produces surface designs of rich colour and vibrant form. Flowers are everywhere blooming in fresh profusion, bold and lyrical.

“Nairobi was so untouched and brilliant with colors, from the rich red soils to the attires women wore. One perfect memory is when my two of my cousins were making this huge knitted bedset outside their home and how the rich red soil made such a delicious background to the colorful art.” Daydreaming of past and future is one her favoured relaxations, but it is also the source of some of her designs. Keywe is one of those designs with its origins in the floating colours and shapes of reverie.

 

 

 

Overlaying her childhood influences of light and colour is inspiration gathered from designers she has come into contact with through Spoonflower. These include Heather Dutton (who I featured here a while back!) and Valentina Ramos. Heather is especially admired for her hard work and business approach, and in Virginia’s work I can see that same kind of beautiful hand-drawn line-work  that I can see in Valentina’s.

 

Athough Kenya is her home country and still captures her heart, Virginia now lives in Sweden. It was there that she started her working life as a nursing assistant. Although she knew it was a good and worthy job, she never felt it was her true calling, and chose to study Graphic Design while still working. After graduating, she worked part-time as a graphic designer, and spent her free moments building up her skills in her true passion of pattern design, by undertaking the online course Art & Business of Surface Patterns (ABSPD).  “In November 2012, I registered my own studio under the name Njeri (pronounced as N-jeri). It is my given name by birth, and it means ‘warrior’s daughter'”.

She had a very scary moment not so long ago when her iMac crashed, and she realised that that she hadn’t a backup for over three months; her new surface design collection she had been working on, all lost! Fortunately, she was able to recover everything, but it brought home to her the serious importance of regular backups.

 

 

Her best advice is to “Follow your heart and JUST DO IT!” However, it comes with a warning: “Set/plan your goals, this is of major importance. If you don’t, it is like being in a place with lots of streets and having no idea of where you are heading to.”

 

 

 

You can find more of Virginia’s designs in her Spoonflower shop, NjeriDesigns.