From events like First Friday to attractions like the Phoenix Art Museum, downtown Phoenix is a place where established and upcoming visual artists flock to. It’s a place to showcase their work, connect with the local community, and find artistic success and inspiration. This rich community and culture is what drew 29-year-old artist Najja to the city.
Raised in Seattle, Najja is a visual artist whose work centers on themes of identity, heritage, and finding solace in the past. His pieces emphasize the use of bold colors, untraditional lines, and unique shapes to create abstract understandings of the human experience.
“The colors I use are very vibrant and I want people to connect with that,” Najja said. “I want my work to sort of light up their day when they see it. They don’t know why or how, but it just is something that speaks to them. Maybe from a past life, maybe from history or a story that was passed down, but something just seems familiar.”
From childhood, Najja has always been drawn to art, spending most of his time growing up coloring and drawing. His love of art as a kid led him to taking art classes as an elective in high school and then studying art at Evergreen State College, where he first considered pursuing his passion for art professionally.
“I’ve always been involved in art, drawing, painting,” Najja said. “It was never me thinking about getting better though, I always just enjoyed it.”
Najja draws a lot of artistic inspiration from other abstract painters, such as Jay Bass, Basquiat and Picasso, as well as his ethnic background and heritage. His experience with travel led him to discover other Black and African artists, such as Wilford Lamb, who he names one of his biggest inspirations.
“I lived in Spain for about three months and I went to a museum in Spain and saw so much African art,” Najja said. “So when I learned that, and I saw that in the art, I traced that back to the African mass and then the African tribes, the Dogon tribe, and new beans. Just you know, Ghana and all that. And then it trades back to like cubism, which is like a European style, but it’s still African.”
Since graduating college, Najja describes himself as a “three-fourths artist” in terms of his career, meaning he is somewhere between pursuing art as a side hustle and completely supporting himself financially off of his art.
“This is my first year actually working both as an entrepreneur and as an artist,” Najja said. “I’ve lived in Arizona for about two years now, and the second year is when I started vending and really started selling artwork. And as I’m working, I’m learning more and more. I’m learning about being an artist, you know, not just going to the street fairs, but actually networking and going to galleries and you know, building that client to collectors.”
Najja thanks the artistic community around him and some of his mentors and collaborators as the people who encourage him to keep creating and experimenting.
“My first art show was in Olympia, Washington, three years ago, and I was 26 years old,” Najja recalled. “And the piece, it was during this month, Black History Month. And so I want to be very intentional for some of these pieces from the show and showcase Black art. To this day, I’m still amazed by what people say and have said about my work. To receive these words, these compliments, and have people telling me they like my art and tell me to keep going, it’s amazing.”
Najja hopes that when people see his work, they feel inspired. He believes that creativity is inherent in all of this.
“Art is everything,” Najja said. “Art is in nature. Sometimes I think, what if every leaf was the same? You know, what if everything was perfect? Art is just the creativity we all have and how we express it. Otherwise, we’d be walking around like zombies. Art is vital, it’s almost like oxygen.”
Check out Najja’s work at this upcoming First Friday on Roosevelt Row and on his website and Instagram.
Edited by Larisa May, Allison Kotzbauer.
Corrections ran 2/28.
