The sixth – and final – volume of Ink is my Blood is a collection of Apollonia Saintclair’s work made between 2019 and 2022.

For this volume Apollonia has written an explanatory introduction about her artistic journey and her future plans:

When I started publishing my drawings on the internet more than ten years ago, I thought I was just a lonely voice, lost in digital infinity. I had neither the ambition nor even the suspicion that anyone would listen.
     I had undertaken to tell in pictures these intimate stories that appeared over the course of my imagination, with no other goal than that of the pure pleasure of creating. But soon, to my lasting surprise, I noticed that you were there, present at the other end of the network, eager to discover a new story, curious to contemplate a new drawing. I understood with delight that I was no longer alone in my alcove.
     And so, I went back to work and, like Scheherazade with her sultan, I traced the lines of one story after another, night after night, motivated not only by the desire to share my art with you, but also perhaps in fear that if I ceased to interest you and could no longer satisfy your demanding eye, I would have somehow signed my death warrant. What would happen if my ink stopped flowing? Would my heart stop and my blood freeze in my veins?
     All of this gave an unexpected and profoundly satisfying meaning to my efforts. The drawings were added to each other and, after having delivered more than a hundred of them, I began to glimpse, like the Persian storyteller, the remote, unexpected possibility of living to reach the number of 1001.
     This volume includes a series of drawings made in 2019 during the worldwide Covid lockdown. It took its inspiration from this unbearable paradox, from the inexpressible nostalgia for past moments and from the promise of reunification still far away: in order to protect those you love, we have to keep them at bay.
     With this sixth volume, I am well past this mythical milestone and the axe has not yet fallen, but the time has come to take a break with this series, not to abandon drawing, but to embark on new projects, which I hope one day to be able to share with you.

Volume 6 also includes a foreword by Florian von Falkenstein – ‘Apollonia’s Line. Distinctly Apollonia. Not a simple photograph, but the unmistakable imagination of this artist that gets under your skin and shakes you until you wake up finding yourself inside one of her drawings.’

To find out more about Ink is My Blood Volume 6, including how to order it and associated prints and offers, Apollonia’s website is here.