In our next edition Ana Albero opens a pet portrait studio at the MFI. Ana´s beautiful, warm and imaginative characters, rooms and landscapes were published in newspapers, magazines and books from Tokio over London, Berlin, Paris to New York. She invites you with the following letter and offers additionally a pet portrait afternoon on June 4 where you are invited to bring your pets of all kinds and sizes to get their portraits drawn.

Dear friends and colleagues,

I would like to invite you to my exhibition Pet Portraits at MFI Berlin.

Over the last years I have noticed that I was being commissioned more and more parenting and children-themed editorial illustrations.

Two of my biggest commissions lately were illustrated children´s books, so I guess I may have slipped into the children-friendly illustration scene involuntarily.

Instead of trying to change what seemed unavoidable, I decided to embrace the children´s book genre and make it my own. With Pet Portraits my intention was to work on my own illustrated book, having full control over the whole process from the concept to the final product.

My goal was to have fun working on this self-initiated project, so I created the character Petra, a female artist who works as a pet portraitist. I am personally more interested in female characters and I am also an animal enthusiast, that is why telling her story made so much sense to me.

Unlike traditional children´s books I avoided to be particularly instructing or moralistic. I preferred to concentrate on recreating what I imagine to be Petra´s everyday life.

Pet Portraits is my humble tribute to professional artists and in a way tells my own story too.

Come to MFI and visit Petras studio, there will be original drawings, prints, beer, a raffle and the very last copies of my book Pet Portraits.