Today we’d like to introduce you to Noemi Fleming.
Hi Noemi, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I always made things — little illustrated stories, hand-lettered cards, characters that lived in my head long before they lived on paper. But for a long time I didn’t frame it as a career. It was just the private part of me that existed alongside everything else.
Professionally I built a pretty different life — project management, technical writing, an MBA, work that spanned industries and continents. And what that world actually taught me was that identity is strategic. That a brand isn’t just a logo or a pretty image — it’s a belief made visible. Most artists resist that framing. I leaned into it.
So I founded VivRo as the place where both sides of me could finally live together. The entrepreneur and the illustrator. The strategist and the woman who grew up next to woods where she was convinced magic was hiding behind every tree.
I specialize in children’s picture book illustration — watercolor, bold characters, big emotion, fluid movement. Southern California changed my palette entirely. The light here, the ocean — it’s in the work whether I plan it or not. And creating alongside my daughter every day keeps me connected to exactly the audience I’m painting for.
I’ve never been a aggressive self-promoter. I let the work carry itself. The commissions and licensing came because I kept showing up consistently, and the work became recognizable before I had a formal strategy around it.
That’s honestly still the model. Show up. Paint the thing. Trust that the right people will find it.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The business side of being an independent artist is genuinely hard in ways nobody prepares you for. Licensing, pricing your work, knowing when to say yes to a commission and when to protect your creative direction — none of that comes naturally. My MBA helped more than I expected, but there’s still a gap between knowing the frameworks and actually applying them to something as personal as your own art.
The other struggle was visibility. I wasn’t going to shout over everyone on social media just to be seen. So I had to trust a slower build — consistency over noise. That takes patience and there were definitely moments I questioned whether it was working.
But here’s what I’d say about all of it: the struggles were directional. Every hard stretch pointed me toward something I needed to clarify — about the work, about the business, about what VivRo actually is. I don’t think I’d have the clarity I have now without the friction that came first.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
VivRo is a design and art studio — and at its core, what I do is create visual worlds that feel alive. I specialize in watercolor illustration for children’s picture books, original art prints, and visual brand identity. Those three things sound different but they’re all solving the same problem: how do you make someone feel something the moment they see an image?
What I’m known for specifically is bold, expressive characters — larger-than-life figures that leap off the page. Big color, rich texture, fluid movement. My work tends to be whimsical but never soft. There’s energy in it. Children respond to that instinctively, which is exactly the audience I’m painting for.
What I’m most proud of is the consistency of the world I’ve built. You can look at a piece of VivRo work and know it’s mine without seeing my name on it. That kind of visual identity doesn’t happen by accident — it’s the result of years of intentional choices about color, character, and feeling. Building something that recognizable as an independent artist, while raising a daughter and maintaining a full professional life in parallel — that genuinely means something to me.
What sets me apart — and I think this is rare in the illustration space — is that I bring both creative and strategic thinking to the work. I have an MBA. I’ve spent over a decade in project management and technical writing at the highest levels. So when I’m working with a client on brand illustration or visual identity, I’m not just making something beautiful — I’m thinking about what the image needs to do. What behavior it needs to drive, what feeling it needs to anchor, what it communicates before a single word is read.
Most illustrators are great artists. I’m also a strategist. That combination is genuinely uncommon, and it’s what makes VivRo something different from a freelance illustration service.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I was lucky to grow up next to woods that taught me how to see magic in ordinary things. Lucky to have traveled the world young enough that it rewired how I look at color and culture and storytelling. Lucky to have a daughter who sits beside me while I paint and reminds me every single day exactly who I’m creating for. That kind of luck — the luck of context, of environment, of the people around you — I don’t take that lightly.
Professionally, I was lucky that my non-art career gave me skills that most independent artists never develop. Understanding contracts, managing projects, communicating with clients, building a brand intentionally — I didn’t have to learn those things the hard way from scratch because a whole other career had already built that foundation. That wasn’t planned. That was fortune meeting preparation.But here’s what I’ve come to believe about luck: it’s largely a story we tell in retrospect. What looks like luck from the outside is usually just someone who stayed ready long enough for the right moment to arrive. I wasn’t lucky that VivRo developed a recognizable visual identity — I was consistent. I wasn’t lucky that I could think strategically about the business — I had done the work.
So yes, luck has touched my life and my business. But I’ve never been willing to wait for it, and I’ve never been willing to blame it.
Pricing:
- Approx. 54″W x 2″D x 59″T Watercolor paper original work $800-$1200
- Web Design
- UX Design
- Branding
- Logo and Identity Design
Contact Info:
- Website: https://noemirochelle9.wixsite.com/vivro
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vivro.app/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VivRoart
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/vivro-art-prints/
Image Credits
VivRo
