Apollonia Saintclair’s Female Gaze

I discovered Apollonia Saintclair's visual universe after Anni Jyn 's suggestion at the end of our chat, the first in this series on my quest to discover the Female Gaze. And boy, was I in for a threat! After gifting myself two of her incredible Ink Is My Blood volumes, I reached out to Apollonia to ask if she would be willing to answer a few questions. Her answers revealed a deeply personal perspective grounded in literature, where imagination and fantasy collide to become immersive moments of erotic exploration. Enjoy!

What is your best seller's work ?

It's hard to say, but probably one of the most popular images is La lionne blessée (Love is a killer). Le masque de la Méduse (Object woman) would be another one.

And the opposite: what is the one work of yours that you deeply love and feel would deserve more success ?

I can't think of one right now, but sometimes there is drawing I am particularly fond of because I mastered a technical challenge and think this is how I would be able to always draw, and then it doesn't get a special recognition.

Many of your pieces delve into themes that are considered taboo or transgressive. What draws you to explore these themes?

I draw primarily for myself -I know that's what every artist says, but it's the only honest premise to answer this question - and I choose my subjects because I see the potential for intense beauty in them – it's as simple as that. The transgressive aspect is collateral, and sometimes I wish I felt the same attraction to say, locomotives, which would make my life easier on social media, but I don't. Maybe what attracts me to erotica is the trickster-ish way it affects the viewer. For it first grabs you by the guts, below articulated emotions, then, like a magic mirror, strips you of conventions and preconceived notions if you let it, to reveal you little by little who you are, and finally shows the world around you in a different light.

How do you navigate the line between provocation and artistic expression?

I do not draw "to shock the bourgeois", but rather to give substance to intuitions that I intimately feel as true. Provocation as a goal always sounds shallow to me, as much as any cultural artifact that has been utterly commodified. If there is no transcendence at work, it’s not art, it’s artifice and the strings show. The reasons why a painting affects us, and continues to affect us centuries later, are not reducible. There is something fundamentally alien there, coming from outside, far from something as worldly as provocation, and beyond the necessary technical skill of the artist.

You've mentioned the influence of literature, including works by H.P. Lovecraft and various erotic authors, on your art. How does literary narrative shape your visual storytelling, and are there specific stories or authors that have recently inspired your work?

A story is an imaginary place where one can – want – live. Unfortunately, you can visit but not stay. I think that's what I try to do with my drawings: to offer through a single image a moment of a story, into which you can project yourself and imagine its unfolding beyond what is visible in the frame. Currently I'm working on Project M , a story inspired by true events during the Renaissance, told through dozens of drawings. It's a new approach, because this time I'm tied to a sequence of events that I need to tell to create an intelligible narrative arc. I'm slowly learning how to create a common thread while maintaining the laconic style that I like.

How do you perceive the evolution of erotic art in contemporary culture, especially in the digital age?

Social media initially enabled an explosion of creativity, the rise of many new talents, and the rapid dissemination of works, particularly erotic ones, to a very wide audience. Now, with censorship on one side and excessive commercial reclamation on the other, the source is drying up, and erotica is returning to the back shelves of bookstores. For reasons far beyond my comprehension, it seems that the libertarianism of the 2000s is giving way to more restrictive – and darker - trends, but I am not in a position to say what influence this will have on erotic art, which as everyone knows has, like a cat, at least seven lives...

Your work often explores the fluidity of gender and sexual identity. How do you approach these themes in your art, and what do you hope to convey to viewers about the spectrum of human sexuality?

Your sexuality is like your DNA, it's unique. So, I see this topic in a very free and relaxed way. On the other hand, it's only one of the determinants that make up each individual identity, and the current tendency to over-emphasise it often leads to contra productive and even bizarre effects. I think that sexuality, experienced individually, is something fundamentally private, and the less the state or society define its framework, the better. It’s of course an illusion, for what happens in the alcove is always in some ways a reflection of collective rules.

While your work transcends simple categorizations, it often incorporates elements of the "female gaze." How do you define the female gaze in your art, and how does it differ from the traditional male gaze?

In my work, women are often the driving force behind the action, they occupy the foreground. Nothing would really happen without them. This is only fair and differs from the iconic canons of some eras - but not all, by the way - where the opposite was the rule. Putting women in the driver's seat is additionally a source of inspiration, because the role reversal offers all sorts of interesting images to draw. Beyond that, I'm wary of definitions, as we are often only reacting to what came before us, certain that we have finally achieved the right balance, while we are simply instantiating new conventions.

You’ve mentioned that viewers often see themselves in your characters. How do these personal connections impact you as an artist, and have any particular interactions with your audience surprised or inspired you?

What strikes me most is that it's often couples, of all ages, who buy my books. Some write to me and tell me about their love at first sight - and the fact that they somehow connect their personal story to my work touches me deeply. I feel a bit like a midwife, a stranger whom you trust and who you associate for a time with extremely intimate events.

Your illustrations balance provocative content with high aesthetic quality. How do you approach this balance, and what is your process for ensuring that your work remains both intellectually and visually engaging?

I try to create images that are as placative as they are transparent. On the one hand, there must be an immediate impact, like a punch, which works even if the image is the size of a postage stamp, but beyond that, it must immediately evoke everything off-screen, open up, withdraw. Black and white is of great help in this, as its reduction forces the viewer to invent a large part of the image, drawing them into the narrative.

Your work leaves much to the viewer's interpretation, embracing ambiguity and mystery. How do you see the role of ambiguity in art?

Philosophers have been at each other's throats for over two millennia over the true nature of reality, while art makes ambiguity its stock in trade. Rationality doesn't tolerate ambiguity well, but are we purely rational beings? Of course not, and art gives us access to some of the layers of reality that lie beyond. It is obvious to everyone, even the most rabid materialist, that there is a fundamentally aesthetic dimension to the experience of reality. In this experience, I see the acceptance of ambiguity as a reversal, as a reconfiguration that generates new meanings. The whole skill for the artist is not to confuse ambiguity with arbitrariness.

(This is for my 17-year old daughter Marion, who studies art in high school here in Brussels). Could you describe your creative process, from idea to execution? Do you use digital tools ?

The architect Le Corbusier spoke of found objects as "objects with a poetic reaction," whether it be a nut, a tree root, or a Doric capital. For me, every drawing begins with an encounter with an image, whether in everyday life or in the media. Experimenting, through sketches, confrontations, and collages with other images, I try to understand what initially piqued my interest, to amplify it, and to discover the stories it contains. There is always a back-and-forth between the narrative aspect and the visual impact: what is this image trying to tell me, and is it visually complete? Technically, I use pencil and ink as much as a digital tablet; I've found that digital, when set up correctly, offers results very similar to ink, with some practical advantages - a drawing table that can be taken anywhere - and some conceptual disadvantages - the tendency to get lost in the details and end up making bombastic art...

What are the artists you look up to that have or had a strong impact and influence on you ?

European adult comics and photography in fashion magazines, which I discovered at a young age, had a profound formative influence on my way of conceiving images. Moebius and [Helmut] Newton, to name just two: the former because, in addition to being a genius with the pen, he taught me that technically, anything goes to express an idea. You can recognize him immediately, and yet if you look closely, you'll see that he sometimes changes style three times in the same vignette. Moebius also shares with Ridley Scott a love of imperfections, of loose papers, which make their images so vivid, so analogous. And Newton because his images are so brutally erotic and intellectual, simultaneously. Each photo is a cathedral made of mirrors, carefully composed, and totally open.

Reading your answers reminded me of a book that deeply fascinated me when I was a student: La femme piège by Enki Bilal. Are you familiar with it? Reflecting on it now, I realize it shares similarities with your artistic universe—erotic, dreamlike, dramatic.

Yes, I know Bilal and although his style has not, I believe, influenced me, I like the universe he has created, especially in his albums with external scenarios of which Exterminator 17 with Dionnet is in my opinion the masterpiece.

Your drawings often reference elements inspired by classic literature. What place does reading have in your daily life ? Could you describe a typical moment when reading triggers the idea for a drawing?

I read every day, and even years later, passages that have left a lasting impression on me come back to me along with a passing impression. An example of a passage that has stayed with me since the first time I read it is from Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World:

It's not necessarily this precise and magnificent image that he inspires, but the feelings it triggers in me that I try to translate. Faithfully drawing the scene would be an illustration - it's actually a fantastic Bilal cover now that I think about it - but feeling it and evoking it, perhaps in a complete image, is more what interests me. The drawings I'm creating at the moment for Project M are also in this sense a new experience, because they have as much a descriptive as a dreamlike goal.

Who would you suggest that I interview next ?

How about meanderingfigure on Insta? I love her work, always inspires me.

Mmh, I must stay away from instagram but I’m glad to see she’s on Bluesky !

This interview being over, we have just scratched the surface of the massive amount of work Apollonia produces. If you’ve made it this far, you will probably want to make sure to follow Apollonia on her Substack and to dig deeper at the excellent Honest Erotica .