"When I see a poster made with AI, I feel offended"

With her work as an illustrator, Sara Morante aims to "illuminate the dark corners without patronizing the reader." This is what she has done, with an original and subtle style, by engaging with the texts of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Lewis Carroll, Miguel Hernández, Jane Austen, or Pérez Galdós, among other authors, or by illustrating more than sixty book covers. Morante answers questions from Hendaye (France), the city where she has lived for twenty years. It is where she draws, teaches illustration courses, and collaborates in press and advertising. It is also where she writes: she has published two novels and is now working on her third.

-Which artist would you have a Sunday vermouth with?

-With Lorca. He must have been very stimulating as a person, and very fun.

-You have just illustrated a poetic anthology of the Granadian.

-Yes. He had enormous sensitivity, enormous empathy, and an ability to look not only at his own but also at those around him. Illustrating him has been a joy, a challenge. I was very eager because of his imagery, his gaze, but above all, because I have sympathy for him as a human being.

-What is your creative process like?

-Well, some people are lucky to have a methodical creative process, but mine is chaotic. There is a process in the brain's 'background' that I don't know how it works nor do I intend to tame it.

-The deadline helps, doesn't it?

-At first, it stressed me out a lot, but now I have more experience and more confidence in my own process. The deadline is one of the most inspiring things: the best ideas come to me at the end, so I need to have a very flexible technique. I might work one day and do nothing for the next two, but I am doing something, my brain is working, even though I am not aware that I am maturing ideas. To relieve my students' stress, that apparent block, I recommend going for a walk, to an exhibition, watching movies, reading, enjoying others' work a bit.

-Does illustration get the recognition it deserves?

-In some ways, yes, but in others, it is being quite undervalued due to artificial intelligence.

-That was my next question.

-Every time I see a poster made with artificial intelligence, especially from public institutions, I feel offended as a citizen. And I don't even want to tell you as an illustrator: not only because they have many flaws and aesthetically do not provide the necessary quality, but because institutions should be supporting the local professional fabric. In some aspects, artificial intelligence is a great tool, but in creative work, it is a setback because there is no creative process and the work of illustration professionals is undervalued, who take into account many things, such as the message being conveyed and the language with which that message is communicated. And professional knowledge and ethics are also required. All this is not considered with artificial intelligence.

-Do you adapt your style to each author?

-It depends. My style is what it is and evolves very slowly, so I do what I feel like at that moment. Illustration is an excuse to pour out my inner imagery: I conceive it as a dialogue, but not with the author, but with the text, to which I give a response from my context and my life experience, without trying to get into the authors' heads. That's the beauty of it because if I were subject to adapting to each one, it would be almost descriptive illustration. That's not fun. Nor does it make me grow.

From hobby to profession

-Are you able to read something without thinking about how you would illustrate it?

-Yes. I have drawn all my life, wrote stories on an Olivetti, and illustrated them since I was little, but when you professionalize a hobby, that hobby stops being an escape valve to become a profession. In my free time, I don't pick up a pencil to draw, I already do it a lot for work.

-What book would you like to illustrate?

-'The Flowers of Evil' by Baudelaire, but it's very complicated. And something by Agota Kristof, who drives me crazy as a reader, but I don't know if it would be an easy job because, necessarily, you have to look elsewhere as an illustrator.

-You have lived in Spain and Ireland, but you ended up settling in France.

-Yes, we've been here for twenty years.

-Why?

-Because of the real estate bubble, mainly. I had just returned from Ireland with who would later become my husband, and since he is Basque, we came to Donosti, but there was no rental market, everything was for sale and at very high prices. So we came to France, which is nearby, and when I saw Hendaye, I said, well, we'll stay here. Now it has gone up, but housing was more affordable at that time.

-And how do you see Spain from the outside?

-I think living, contributing, paying taxes, and shopping in three countries gives me a lot of objectivity. Everywhere has its issues, but from Ireland, I would like to export the work concept because there they don't work an extra hour if they don't get paid; from France, the care for culture and sciences they have from primary school, and from Spain, the know-how, Social Security, and culture. But there are many things that annoy me about all three countries.