Biography: Kwame Nyong'o

Kenya Tue 16-01-2007

Biography: Kwame Nyong'o
By Kwame Nyong'o

Kwame Nyongo As a child born and raised in the mid-west Kwame Nyong’o found his passion for drawing and creative thinking at Oak Trails Montessori School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In the early eighties, his family migrated to Kenya, the fathers home country, where Kwame continued to put his pencils and paints to task by creating, along with his brother Tavia, comic book periodicals for the neighbourhood, ‘The Maisonette Mayhem’, and the school yard, ‘The Weekly Blah’.

A big marvel comics buff, Kwame was also known for his super hero personifications and caricatures of classmates and friends.

As the time drew near towards the end of high school, where one is encouraged to declare which profession they wish to pursue, Kwame momentarily considered rocket science, as he had done well in mathematics and physics, but soon came back to reality and stuck to his pens: to pursue visual arts.

On return to the United States in the early nineties, Kwame attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where he studied Fine Arts, and received a well-rounded exposure to painting, sculpture and photography.

Upon completing this course he discovered that it was slightly tricky to pay the bills with fine art alone, so went on to the Academy of Art University in California, to be exposed to the in and outs of commercial arts such as illustration, animation and the like.

After gaining some work experience in animation studios in California, Kwame decided to go back to Kenya in the year 2000 and help build up what he terms ‘The Final Frontier’ in the global animation industry.

Since his return to his teenage stomping ground, Kwame has played a pivotal role in this development of illustration and animation in Africa. Kwame encourages artists and producers to come to Africa and see the rapidly rising talent base, which when with mixed with the infinite amount of rich stories and culture, makes for incredibly fertile ground for production.

With his current children’s book ‘A Tasty Maandazi’ Kwame highlights contemporary life in Africa, through this day in the life of a young boy, Masu, in a coastal Kenyan town in this coming of age story. Kwame says, “Most children’s books you find in the market today about Africa are not created by Africans and tend to portray inaccurate images of Africa, by either being too romanticised or too negative.

This story that I have created ‘A Tasty Maandazi’ is not about the wild animals in the jungle, it’s not about poverty and disease. It’s about normal people living normal lives in their unique cultural context. I created this book with the main objective of making a vehicle to educate the ignorant”.

Kwame Nyong’o is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Related Links:

Kwame Nyong'o - Directory of Illustration

Posted By: African Colours

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