|
Clive Barker (born 5 October 1952) is an
English
author,
film director and
visual artist best known for his work in
both metaphysical fantasy and
horror fiction. Barker came to
prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of
short stories which established him as a
leading young horror writer. He has since written many
novels and other works, and his fiction
has been adapted into motion pictures, notably the
Hellraiser series, Candyman
series and the film Gods & Monsters.
Clive Barker's energy and imagination seem to have no bounds. Having
written over a dozen novels and being the creative force behind thirteen
major motion pictures, Clive's proliferance and talent are truly
inspiring. His movies have terrified and fascinated movie goers for
over a decade. His novels have won him the acclaim of critics and the
admiration of millions of fans around the world.
One of his first novels became the cult
horror classic, Hellraiser, adapted and directed by Barker himself. In the
early nineties, Barker began expressing his vicious visions in the medium
of painting. Like his movies and books, Barker's paintings investigate
reality, sexuality, and morality. Dancing across paper and canvas, one
will find monsters and martyrs in all degrees of pain and pleasure.
Clive Barker's art has graced the walls of art galleries on both coasts of
the United States as well as the walls of private collectors and fans all
over the globe. It has been celebrated in three full length books - the
incomparable pair of books in the Illustrator series from Fred Burke and
2005's Visions of Heaven and Hell - and has inspired some of the
most-enduring images in the horror canon.
Like the graphic visualizations of a war
correspondent, images drawn by Barker's hand capture in a frozen frame
sights which exist on the fringes of imagination and report them back to
an unsuspecting public tucked up safely in their own comfortable beds.
Recurring themes of sexuality, masks and monsters allow insights into the
written word - artwork, writing, directing : all part of one continuum
that is "imagination".
Clive Barker's artwork expresses an unseen
world of fantasy, co-existing with our own reality. His characters, while
often physically misshapen and outrageous, portray very human emotions.
Perhaps it is for this reason that many people find a deeper meaning
within Clive's artwork in a genre too often prone superficiality
For Barker, painting is a visceral,
non-intellectual process: "Writing - particularly the large books that I
write - is a ritual, filled with elaborate, intellectual processes, and
structuring a book is a big puzzle. Painting is not a puzzle. Painting is
red and yellow. Painting is filling the brush with something that looks so
tasty you feel like you could feed off it for a thousand years, then
slapping it on the canvas and feeling an immediate emotional rush from
it....Painting is about unleashing. Painting to me is: paint and a lot of
cheap cigars and a lot of loud music." Where his epic novels require
sustained mental effort, and his films require the collaboration with
numerous other people, painting allows Barker to indulge in the immediacy
of personal expression.
Statement & Shows
Press & Articles |
