Text: Karoline Stjernfelt, told to Karoline Markholst and translated by Hazel Evans

Karoline Stjernfelt on broadening her horizons
“I’ve just finished ‘Tomorrow Will Be Better’, which has been ten years in the making. This means I’ve been confined as an illustrator to a certain style and technique, which is why I’m ravenously hungry to broaden my horizons. I dream of working with charcoal and pencils, with layering and in huge formats – or in miniature. The digitisation of almost everything in our everyday lives and advances in AI have given people a renewed interest in and appreciation for analogue craftsmanship, and I find this fusion of the analogue and the digital incredibly exciting.”

Karoline Stjernfelt on power as a theme
“I’m very interested in power – on a societal level, for one, but especially between people, to ask: Who is exploiting whom? The whole of ‘Tomorrow Will Be Better’ is one long study of the power dynamic between the three main characters. Caroline Mathilde is in a position of power over Struensee because she is the Danish queen and English princess. But he holds power over her because he is older and a man in a patriarchal society who has lived a much freer life than hers. Struensee also has power over the king because he is not plagued by mental illness as Christian is. Meanwhile, Christian is king of Denmark and therefore superior to both Struensee and Caroline Mathilde. I find it fascinating that there are always multiple facets to people and their relationships with others. It’s never black and white, and I appreciate that.”

Karoline Stjernfelt on work coming to life

“My work feels most alive when I’m alone at my desk. When I’ve just solved a difficult scene or I’m deeply absorbed in drawing the pages and have rendered a face so realistically that it feels alive. It’s often at night – that’s when I let myself disappear into my work, and my sense of self dissolves. That has always been the greatest appeal of doing what I do: the dissolution of the self.”

Karoline Stjernfelt on inspiration
“As a graphic novelist, I’m very interested in conveying as much as possible through images. Which means the words that do appear on the pages have to be all the stronger. This is where poetry comes in as a source of inspiration. How simply can you express what you want to say? ‘A poem must stand in the tension between a theory and a song...’, as Søren Ulrik Thomsen [award-winning Danish poet] once said about poetry. Although the text in my works is clearly prose, I draw a great deal of inspiration from poetry and fine-tune my language until it’s clear and sharp and has earned its place alongside the images.

I’m also deeply fascinated by the great painters of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, like Caravaggio and Joseph Wright of Derby. The former retells entire biblical scenes, the latter scientific scenes with human interactions – both in a single image. There isn’t a better masterclass in visual storytelling, and I think graphic novels can learn a lot from classical painting.”