Mina Braun
The Allotment
At the Beach
Autumn Leaves
In the Park
The Balcony
The Vegetable Stall
The Warm Woolly Blanket
The Red Bench
All images © Mina Braun
Mina Braun was born in Germany in 1980. She studied at the Kassel Academy of Art before continuing her training at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2003. After completing first a BA and then an MA in Illustration, Mina stayed in Edinburgh, working as a freelance illustrator and a tutor for various community art projects.
In 2015 she relocated to Berlin, where she now works from her shared studio space in Neukö"lln. As an illustrator she is motivated by the wish to communicate some sort of narrative, with childhood, our relationship to Nature, and the beauty of mundane life being recurring themes.
Mina likes to capture moments of tranquillity by intertwining elements from Nature with objects or situations from everyday life, and her illustrations and prints often feature motifs such as leaves growing from a teapot, or a woolly blanket turning into a garden. Her inspiration derives from contemporary illustration, particularly picture books for children and adults, as well as from folklore and fairy tales, children's TV shows from the 1970s, Czech poster art and street art.
Most of Mina's ideas come from the intensive amount of time she spends drawing in her sketchbook. Her work always starts with a black line-drawing, which will then evolve into a print or a digital image. Mina discovered screen printing as a student, and it became one of her favourite ways of working, and the perfect technique to turn black drawings into colour. Creating her own limited editions of screen prints is still an important part of her creative practice.
Recently Mina was commissioned to illustrate an activity book for children. Can I Have a Kitten? was published by Octopus in August this year.
Mina's work illustrates Patrick Holden's review in Issue 298 of Resurgence & Ecologist.
