About our illustrators

Kerstin Ax

Kerstin Ax (born in 1975)

Kerstin Ax grew up in a rural environment in the Vordereifel in the West of Germany. It became apparent early on, that one day, she would pursue a creative career. After studying communication design in Trier, Kerstin worked in agencies for several years. She has been working as a freelance designer since 2005. While decorating her son's nursery, Kerstin rediscovered her love of illustration. Starting off with animal motifs, she began to experiment with colours, shapes, and paper. Kerstin loves working with her hands using different materials and tools as well as playing with colours. All her paper collages are created analogously. Her inspiration mainly derives from nature and from reading books and magazines. Sustainability and environmental protection are also very important to her. Her commitment to the Clean River Project e. V. is a matter close to her heart. Kerstin describes the cooperation with paruspaper as very pleasant and one of the things she values most, is our regional production.

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Bettina Beuttenmüller

Bettina Beuttenmüller (born in 1971)

Born in Dresden, Bettina Beuttenmüller now lives in Munich as a trained illustrator and designer. She loves to let the pencil “dance” over the paper and the wonderful sounds that emanate from drawing. For her, to illustrate means to perceive a moment and then to transform this experience into a vivid image. Bettina likes working with expressive lines and intuitive colours. With her images she wants to create a sense of real joie de vivre. This is also how the name of her studio “Freudenwerkstatt (workshop of joy)”, which she has been running since 2010, came about. Creating illustrations and patterns for stationery products and textiles gives her just as much pleasure as teaching artistic techniques in creative workshops. In addition, Bettina can also rely on her many years of experience in marketing. The encounter with paruspaper was marked by great mutual resonance right from the start, not only on an artistic level. The environmentally friendly and socially responsible approach of the publisher is also an urgent issue for Bettina.

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Dörthe Brandt

Dörthe Brandt (born in 1962)

Dörthe Brandt was born in Düsseldorf and started her creative career by studying communication design at the Folkwang University in Essen in the West of Germany. Her exchange year at the Academy of Art in San Francisco / USA brought new artistic impulses. Dörthe has lived and worked as a freelance designer in Berlin since 1991. After mainly working digitally, Dörthe rediscovered working with watercolours in 2015. Since then, she has also concentrated on illustrative forms of expression, especially for customers in the greeting card sector. The artist loves nature and therefore really appreciates the proximity to the Botanical Garden in Berlin. Travelling and discovering other cultures are also among her favourite pastimes. The sweet life in the form of patisserie also plays an important role for Dörthe. The illustrator leads a workshop for elementary school children and does volunteer work. She enjoys spending time with people and promoting international relationships.

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Mina Braun

Mina Braun (born in 1980)

Mina was born in Frankfurt am Main and grew up in Hesse. She studied visual communication at the Kunsthochschule in Kassel as well as illustration at the Edinburgh College of Art in Great Britain. In 2015 Mina left Edinburgh and moved to Berlin. During her studies, Mina already spent a lot of time in the print workshop. The working methods and aesthetics of various printing techniques still determine her work today. Her digital illustrations therefore also remind you of riso prints. Textures, colour overlays, surfaces, and lines do not fit perfectly and impress with a deliberately imperfect look. The artist loves a reduced colour palette and strong contrasts. Mina prints her free works with a risograph and receives most of her customer orders from book and game publishers. The illustrator wants to tell stories with her pictures and capture everyday situations. Her main motif are people, their relationship to their environment and to their fellow human beings. Postcards and greeting cards are the ideal format for Mina! They are small works of art that are affordable for everyone, bringing you and others happiness. Mina finds the cooperation with paruspaper very appealing, especially due to the consistent environmentally-friendly orientation of the publisher.

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Inga Knopp-Kilpert

Inga Knopp-Kilpert (born in 1973)

Inga Knopp-Kilpert is a graphic designer originally from Schleswig-Holstein in the North of Germany. After studying communication design in Hamburg, she worked in advertising agencies for 12 years. Then, after moving to Stuttgart, in the Southwest of Germany, the true Northern Light ventured into self-employment and has since worked as a freelance illustrator for clients from a wide variety of sectors. In the past years, Inga has passionately specialized in paper collages, which allow her to pursue her love of analogue creativity with scissors and gouache. Inga’s designs not only adorn stationary products but can also be found decorating gift books, porcelain, glass, packaging, shop windows, home textiles, beddings, and fabrics. For paruspaper, the designer mostly creates decorative and cheerful patterns. Her portfolio also offers cards with unique hand-made lettering for various occasions. In many of her paper collages, Inga’s great love for nature shines through, which is also something that connects her to paruspaper. In her free time, Inga loves to be out and about in woods and meadows.

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Anne Koch

Anne Koch (born in 1993)

Drawing has accompanied Anne Koch since early childhood. Her mother, who is from Poland, is an artist specializing in abstraction. Anne was born in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, in the Southwest of Germany and completed her interdisciplinary studies in Saarbrücken in 2017 with a degree in communication design. During her permanent position in an advertising agency, Anne also trained in the design of flower arrangements and founded the „Florale Atelier“ to be able to work for various events and weddings. Her passion for drawing also got reignited during that time. In 2019, Anne started her own business as a freelance illustrator and designer when she moved to Kaiserslautern. Her main motifs are floral scenes, animals, cityscapes, and still lifes for publishers, companies, and private clients. Anne herself describes her style as a combination of fine lines and colour fields that meet nostalgic patterns, never missing the work with the pencil. For paruspaper, the illustrator creates delicate designs in pastel tones in her very individual handwriting. Often her work is created in an analogue way, only to be coloured digitally later. Practicing yoga gives Anne balance, strength, and inspiration.

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Antje Therés Kral

Antje Therés Kral (born in 1971)

Antje Therés Kral is a designer & illustrator as well as the owner of the LUPINUS SALON studio in Munich. After completing various trainings in the fields of painting & graphics at the Dresden Art Academy and communication design & poster painting at a teaching studio in Görlitz in Eastern Germany, she has been working as a freelancer since 1992. She layouts and illustrates for several magazines & publishers, such as acufactum, Busse Seewald and Grätz. She also develops company brandings and designs product lines. Sustainability is particularly important to her, which she very much connects to the paruspaper philosophy. Because of these shared values, both sides quickly got along very well, which also makes working together such a pleasure. For Antje, a fruitful cooperation and creating motifs that win the hearts of the customers as well as bringing real joy, are particularly important. For paruspaper, Antje for example illustrates the enchanting adventures of "parus the blue tit". She works both analogously and digitally, always with great inventiveness and attention to detail.

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Hanne Lund

Hanne Lund (born in 1984)

Hanne Lund has loved colours and patterns ever since she was a little child. Her grandparents ran an art supplies store north of Copenhagen, Denmark. In the early 1990s, Hannes family moved to Berlin for work. After graduating from high school, Hanne spent some time travelling and “exploring her fears and desires,” as she calls this influential time of her life. Back in Germany, she worked in various advertising agencies in order to finally study fine art. She is just as fond of old posters, Dadaist collages and children's drawings as she is of the Scandinavian design of her home country Denmark. Hanne spends a lot of time in nature. Yoga and meditation are an important part of her life. She lives as a freelance designer & artist near Berlin. What she likes about paruspaper is the social and environmentally friendly company philosophy. For her card series, Hanne works with a wide variety of analogue techniques and materials ranging from acrylics to pastels and printmaking. She happily takes in a piece of the zeitgeist into her designs, often with a smile and a little wink. Have you already heard of "waldbaden (forest bathing)"?

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Izabella Markiewicz

Izabella Markiewicz (born in 1977)

Before following her passion for illustrating, the artist with Polish roots initially worked as an interior designer. In 2010, Izabella founded her interdisciplinary design studio “MAEDCHENWAHN” in Saarbrücken in the South-West of Germany. She creates designs and patterns for textiles, gift items and home accessories. Humorous children’s books and paper products are also part of Izabellla’s portfolio. For paruspaper she has developed a series of clear, graphically reduced drawings that have a strong reference to printmaking and convince with a French and maritime flair. Above all, human faces and animal emotions are perfectly summed up in skilful lines and a few recurring shades of colour. Her very modern, minimalist imagery enriches the paruspaper range with a further, very distinct style. What the illustrator likes most about working with paruspaper is the mix of well-curated motifs and the responsible approach to the issues of the environment and sustainability.

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Jessica Nielsen

Jessica Nielsen (born in 1977)

Jessica Nielsen was born in Málaga to a Dutch mother and a Danish father. She spent the first years of her life in Spain, later moving back to the Netherlands with her mother. Jessica studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and works as a freelance designer for international clients. In recent years she has passionately specialized in pattern designs which are for example used for textiles and packaging. She develops paper goodies such as bookmarks and wrapping paper for flow magazine. In addition to nature as a source of inspiration, Jessica feels especially attached to Scandinavian functionalism. By transferring hand-drawn images to digitally perfected patterns, she creates minimalist and contemporary designs, which deliberately abstain from playful details. The designer is particularly pleased about the collaboration with paruspaper, seen as environmental protection and sustainability are also very important to her. Jessica sees her patterns as a wonderful stylistic addition to the publisher's range. She hopes that her fresh, modern cards will turn into decorative objects in many homes as well as at workplaces.

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Maike Neuendorff

Maike Neuendorff (born in 1974)

Maike Neuendorff grew up in Sigmaringen in Baden-Württemberg in the South of Germany. Ever since she was a child, Maike loved drawing and nature. She wanted to make the colour green her profession and therefore studied landscape architecture at the Technical University of Munich and then worked as a landscape architect. During the 10 years she and her family lived in London, Maike visited many English gardens and fell in love with British (coastal) landscapes. Her longing for drawing and free creativity on paper led her to the Camberwell College of Arts in London, where she completed her master's degree in illustration with distinction. Her picture book "Il Giardino dei Sogni/The Garden of Dreams" (published by Carthusia, Milan) was among the finalists at the Silent Book Contest 2019 and was exhibited at the Children's Book Fair in Bologna. Today Maike lives in the Rhine-Main area and works as an illustrator and author. She loves gardening, spending time with the family and enjoys hiking. For paruspaper she designs, among other things, a series of cheerfully colourful, partly exotic animal motifs.

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Katja Rahtjen

Katja Rahtjen (born in 1966)

Katja was born as the daughter of a children's book illustrator in Freiburg im Breisgau in the South of Germany. She came into contact with painting, colours and paper at an early age, before finally studying design at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. After completing her diploma, Katja worked as a trainee at a furniture magazine and then as an editor. For 20 years she has been working as a freelance stylist for various living, women's and food magazines. She loves handicraft- , DIY-, floral- and decoration topics. Working on cookbooks is also part of Katja's projects. The designer particularly enjoys sewing on paper. This analogue technique cannot always be precisely planned; new, exciting things are always created in the process. What the artist particularly likes about paruspaper is the philosophy of mindfulness and sustainability. She finds the consistent commitment to environmental protection very impressive and is happy to support these goals.

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Xenia Schmidt

Xenia Schmidt (born in 1975)

Xenia Schmidt was born in Hamburg. She passed her A-Levels at the International School Hamburg and then completed a preparatory course for art studies at the Chelsea School of Art in London. Xenia received her Masters degree of Fine Arts in illustration in 2008 from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, USA. Since moving to Berlin, she has worked as a freelance illustrator for various children’s book publishers in Germany and abroad. Between 2009 and 2013, Xenia also took on a teaching position at the Academy of Art University. She loves nature. Flora and fauna are a great source of inspiration to her, as well as impressions from the lively city of Berlin. Xenia likes to go walks without a set destination to discover new places. At home, she reads a lot and watches her plants grow. All this flows into the illustrator’s imagery, which she creates for paruspaper. To her, paruspaper’s commitment to environmental protection and sustainability is wonderful and she is particularly impressed by the lovingly designed cards and high quality of the products.

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Analuz Sousa

Analuz Sousa (born in 1989)

Analuz Sousa loves to explore Portugal, the home country of her grandparents who emigrated to Germany in the 1960s. She herself grew up in Hamburg and loves the rough north as well as the colourful south of Europe. Ana is passionate about art, but initially started her career in crafts. As a trained gardener she was able to combine both her creativity and love of nature. In her free time, Ana used every opportunity to design cards, posters and CD covers for family and friends who eventually encouraged her to make more of her talent. Finally, Ana decided to train as a graphic designer. She acquired a large part of her analogue drawing skills autodidactically and through the assistance to other artists. In addition to plants, Ana is passionate about animals. For her illustrations, she likes to play with their character traits. In her favourite shop in Hamburg, Ana likes to buy our nature postcards, however missing illustrations in the range at the time she first discovered paruspaper. The joy of working together and adding her beautiful designs to our collection is therefore all the greater.

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Maritta Stolarow

Maritta Stolarow (born in 1953)

At the end of the 1960s, Maritta Stolarow began her artistic career in her hometown Dresden with an apprenticeship as a decorator and poster painter. After studying at the University of Applied Sciences for Advertising and Design in Berlin, Maritta worked as an advertising manager in Dresden and Berlin. The trained designer has been working as a freelance illustrator in Berlin and Sofia, Bulgaria since 1981. The long-term cooperation with the leading greeting card publisher of the former GDR, Planet-Verlag, has left an immense impact. At paruspaper, we like to remember the fairy tale illustrations of our childhood. After the fall of the Wall, Maritta Stolarow illustrated for Herlitz a.o. She works exclusively analogue. In addition to her illustrative work, she loves to create decorative collages, graphics for storyboards and ceramic sculptures. Maritta likes to travel, especially with her husband in the van. The artist lives close to the Müggelsee in Berlin and is happy to be able to designing greeting cards again with paruspaper.

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Emily Claire Völker

Emily Claire Völker (born in 1979)

Emily Claire Völker's work reflects her very own sense of humour, her love for everything light, beautiful and strange in life, as well as her fascination for the world of animals and plants. Growing up on the German Wine Route in Rheinland-Pfalz in the Southwest of Germany, surrounded by the lovingly tended garden of her parents, the artist has always kept her sense of happiness and nature. Her career as an artist has taken the German-Australian to a variety of fascinating places: first to study theatre studies in Bayreuth in the South of Germany, then to the music metropolis of Liverpool, UK, where she worked as a freelance video artist and head of various cultural education projects and finally to Berlin to discover her calling in illustration. Emily is currently working on several children's books and setting up her own artistic projects in the field of environmental protection and sustainability. Her colourful works are created analogously with ink, watercolour and acrylics.

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Ruby Warnecke

Ruby Warnecke (born in 1994)

Ruby is originally from Lübeck, North Germany. After finishing her A-Levels, she moved to Hamburg where she completed her bachelor's degree in illustration at the HAW. The illustrator sees her semester abroad at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (USA) as a great enrichment in her artistic career. The focus of Ruby's work currently lies in illustrating children's and picture books, hand lettering and stationery products. Her sketches are made with pen and paper. She loves the variety and combination of analogue and digital techniques and likes to work with watercolour, gouache and crayons. As a North German, Ruby feels very connected to the sea and nature is her greatest source of inspiration. She particularly likes to illustrate animals and plants. The artist enjoys the company of her guinea pigs at her work, practices yoga and her best ideas come to her on her small Hamburg balcony. She describes the collaboration with paruspaper as very fruitful and exciting. With great pleasure Ruby illustrates motifs with floral and maritime elements. Charming animals, such as the "winter blackbird" and nature scenes hook you immediately.

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