A thing of beauty………..

When I think of cliché’s the one that springs to mind about Clive Barker’s work is “A picture is worth a thousand words’. In most cases that would be true, but in Clive Barker’s case a picture could be worth a story, a film, a novel or even a world.

The Arsonist from 1992 is one of the most talked about pieces that Barker has painted. It is a visionary form of such abstract power that entices the imagination to see his story.

There is a very serious man at the heart of this painting; you can only imagine how or why he has become The Arsonist. The flames run up the torch like stick around his body to his head. Hair becomes fire and leaps off to bring fire to the world, a world that does not understand The Arsonist.

The background swirls with a mixture of reds, blacks and green giving a sense that all has been engulfed in his flames. Maybe these flames are of retribution or pain.

The Arsonist like many of Clive Barker’s characters is a man transforming, he is leaving behind what he was, for a new future. Everything about The Arsonist is hypnotic; he is strange and beautiful, regal and powerful. Like many of the signature images created by Barker he has become an enigma.

Offering and Hello David??

Today is the last day of the Clive Barker Imaginer show at Crown Gallery in Carlisle. For many reasons it has been a great success. The main reason it has been a success is that many people have seen Clive Barker’s art in a gallery for the first time. It is a wonderful thing to walk into a space and see creations going back in time to the 1970’s. Studies in black and white for Nightbreed and Books of Blood are on the wall next to characters for Abarat. Works in glorious colour hang in a room for Universal Mazes, Halloween costumes for Disguise Costumes hand next to characters both new and old. The canvas with their distinct and powerful oils, are in the entrance to the gallery, each one telling a story to the viewer.

The central image to the Imaginer show has been a canvas entitled ‘Offering’ which is pure Clive Barker. The figures in the hand are being offered to us as a way of seeing imagination. Each figure is a little shy, just like small children meting new people for the first time. Each of the figures has their own personality. A yellow man with his hands in his pockets, a woman in a old fashioned dress with vibrant hair that is somehow regal in the tradition of Elizabeth the first and shy creature which is almost childlike in its offering of a silhouette. The hand is that of someone we will never see but is perhaps, one of us, one of the few that would fall in love with these innocents.

Placing the figures and the hand against a sky of swirls and clouds also gives the painting a hypnotic quality as the background seems to be moving as the figures stand still as the hand that we presume to be human offers the figures to us.

When you look at the black and white image you can see something playful and simple. It is easy to see that the black and white ink is a starting point for the oil on canvas. The original image has five figures of the imagination, in basically the same position. They have changed over the 20 years or so between as has their creator. But at the same time there is no doubting the relationship between the two works.

‘Hello David’ refers to Clive Barker’s close friend and original personal assistant David Dodds and was most likely created as a piece of fun between friends. Offering is a fantastic example of Clive Barker’s imagination and the fact that relationships between work never stops. Sketch to painting, character to story, book to film Clive Barker never stops being an Imaginer.

Abarat - Who is Christopher Carrion?

Who is Christopher Carrion?

Clive Barker’s Abarat books have given one of the strongest links between images and words. September 27^th 2011 will see the publication of Abarat; Absolute Midnight, book three in the series and the book that will change everything for both the reader and the Abarat.

Looking back at Clive Barker’s Abarat and all the drawings and paintings you can see characters grow and change through time. Although Candy Quackenbush is the character who’s story we are following, many of Barker’s legion of admirer’s have gravitated towards the more complex character of Christopher Carrion.

Like all the great Monsters, there is so much more to Christopher Carrion. He has suffered at the hands of his grandmother Mater Motley and has to follow her every demand of face her wrath. Carrion shows signs of a heart and signs that love is the key to everything.

Below is the earliest version of Christopher Carrion, entitled ‘The Collar’ it clearly shows Barker working on his Monster, even before the Monster came to life on the page. You feel a sadness looking at the work, you feel that he is hiding behind his collar and you feel empathy for his disfigurement even though you cannot see it. The eyes carry a sadness that gives 'The Collar' a real sense of character. Looking at it now the painting is like a sketch for the more complex signature painting that Barker would create for his Abarat books.

Clive Barker in two paintings then depicts Christopher Carrion. The first painting is the classical image from Abarat 1. This is a image that is full of character and identity, you can see his relationship with ‘The Collar’ but he is much more regal and powerful. One of the other main differences is the fact that Barker paints ‘The Collar’ as a 24 x 24 inch piece and ‘Christopher Carrion’ is 48 x 60 inches.

Clive Barker’s depiction of one of his central characters ‘Christopher Carrion’ has become one of the key artist works of his varied and expressive artistic life. It is an image that belongs on the wall of one of the great art galleries of the world.

‘Young Christopher Carrion’ has yet to be seen in the Abarat books although it was most likely painted before his older self. It was shown in Visions of Heaven and Hell and it can be seen that Carrion’s back-story is told in this painting. Your can see his mouth stitched up by his evil grandmother so giving a degree of sympathy to a young Monster. But as Clive Barker has often shown us, Monsters are often more than just an image of a figure. Monsters and their monstrous actions often lurk in the hearts of men.

Cry (i)1977 and Cry (ii) 2007 ( 30 Years On)

What I love more than anything else about Clive Barker’s artwork is that you can find links between the artworks. Cry (i) was created in 1977 when Barker was involved in writing and directing plays with The Dog Company. It is a stunning mixed media piece on paper that Barker’s Father brought home for his son from work.

Cry (i) speaks to you as the truly dark man screams out with a red mouth which that suggests pain and suffering. In the first version the red also suggests the sensitivity nipples and the throat or voice box. The background is a sea of blood red and the shy is very much a form of darkness. Two black poles head into the sky and meet black clouds as two beams come down from the sky to reach the figure that is crying out at you the viewer.

Cry (ii) is clearly the same figure thirty years on. The colour that Clive Barker has added has given the figure more detail but I feel his pain is exactly the same. This makes the link between the two works hugely important.

I both works it is the red against the black that makes the viewer feel pain, or even sorrow for the character. It is interesting that Barker chooses to call the work ‘Cry’ and not scream. Cry gives a sadness and gives the character a tragic feeling or a sense that something terrible is wrong with the world that the dark man lives within.

At the same time as the dark figure cries there is a beauty that speaks out from both works and there is a power that the thirty year journey still takes the viewer on.

The Self Sufficient Man

I remember the day in 1990 when I opened the Clive Barker Illustrator book for the first time. The images became tattooed in my imagination. Some of them challenged the twenty two year old who had bought the book. The Self Sufficient Man was the image in the book the provoked the most thought for me.

Back in 1990 I had escaped my job in a factory making shoes and started to develop my aspirations to work in the music industry and make films. I had met a girl who was at University from my adopted town of Burnley in Lancashire and moved to Newark. She had a job during her sandwich year at Loughborough University and I went back to college to get some GCSE’s and A-Level’s. Money was so tight we could afford to go to the pub once a week for 3 drinks each. So Clive Barker Illustrator at £10.00 was a large amount of money, but in retrospect it was worth every penny.

The book and all the wonders inside somehow made me see Clive Barker more clearly and well for me at least it all started to make sense. Books led to Films, which then led to Artwork. The circle was starting to look like a whole or as my academic language would later suggest I could see Barker’s work in a holistic fashion.

So I now show The Self Sufficient Man as often as I can when I am giving papers on Clive Barker’s work at Oxford University or in Warsaw Poland, I even showed him in all his glory at Trinity College in Dublin. One thing is for sure people always remember him.

I think that Clive Barker has always created iconic imagery and he has always explored his sexuality. As a man who now writes about Barker’s artworks and creates books, curates exhibitions and wants the world to see the amazing works Clive Barker has created, it matters that Barker explores his own sexuality in all his artistic mediums. But at the same time I don’t care that Clive Barker is a gay artist because to me what matters more is that we have Clive Barker, because he is the greatest living Imaginer of our times and I love everything he creates.

It is just that sometimes we are drawn back to those early links so that we can see the deeper developments now. Enjoy The Self Sufficient Man and never forget him.

Clive Barker and Mervyn Peake in Carlisle, Home of the Fantastic

Clive Barker wrote and Illustrated ‘The Wood On The Hill’ around 1966. The story can be read in Douglas E. Winter’s biography of Clive Barker’s life entitled The Dark Fantastic. The two images can be seen within Phil and Sarah Stokes exhaustive biography of Clive Barker’s early works entitled Memory, Prophecy and Fantasy, Volume One: Liverpool Lives.

What draws me to start my ‘Blog’ on Clive Barker’s artwork with these two wonderful detailed pieces is my belief that all of Barker’s work is symbiotic in its nature and that I believe that the writing would not exist with images and vice a versa the images would not exist without the writing.

We are all the sum of our influences and never more so at the beginning of our journeys into a creative life. These images show the same flair and beauty of the work of Mervyn Peake an artist and writer in his own right. This fact has become much clearer after visiting ‘Lines of Flight Mervyn Peake, the Illustrated Work at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle follow this link to see more http://www.tulliehouse.co.uk/lines-flight-mervyn-peake-illustrated-work .

How ironic that the first exhibition of Clive Barker’s work would be held at the crown gallery in Carlisle at the same time as a retrospective of the illustrations of Mervyn Peake. This makes Carlisle the home of the fantastic in the UK right now. All of the work in the Clive Barker Imaginer exhibition can be seen here http://www.crowngallery.net/clive-barker-catalogue.html .

Looking at these two early Clive Barker drawings you can see detail and story with character and pure storytelling. They are small and beautiful and come from a grouping for the ‘Wood On The Hill’ within the exhibition you can see characters from 1978 to 2011. They belong to books like Abarat, Cabal and Books of Blood. There are images from films like Nightbreed and characters from Halloween Costumes for Disguise. There is even an Image to La Bete created in homage to Jean Cocteau and his Beauty and the Beast.

Come and visit Carlisle and see the work of these two masters who share so much yet are so different. Carlisle is the home of the fantastic, at least for the next two weeks.

A LIfe Lived In The Imagination

It does not matter what led you to see Clive Barker’s artworks here for the first time. It may well be one of his many books, films, comics, video games or photography that led you here. What matters now is that in your hands you hold the key to his worlds.

At every stage of Clive Barker’s artistic life there are characters drawn or painted to help tell the story or bring a character to life. These characters are primal in their birth as Barker picks up and draws from his imagination as these beings are born. If you look carefully you will see that a sketch can become a detailed drawing which then can become a painting. Some of these characters have been on a journey with their creator of over 30 years as you can see from the oil paint on the corner of the drawings as they have been painted.

As you look at these imaginings you will meet characters from the Abarat, some of them will be vividly painted in oils on canvas. They may well be full of colour, painted in an impasto style with layer upon layer of painted and deep scratches as Barker explores the layers of paint as he defines the work before calling it finished and lighting a cigar to call it finished. Other Abarat characters can be found on card and paper created in a multitude of methods, ink, pencil, pastel, oil, marker or even mixed media.

Clive Barker cares about each and every one of these characters, they are his children, they form his life’s work and are his gift to us. When Barker wrote Weaveworld in 1987 he created a Credo ‘That Which Can Be Imagined Need Never Be Lost’, this says everything about the paintings and drawings he creates. If you choose to own one of his works never forget that you have part of Clive Barker’s worlds and part of what makes him the most important ‘Imaginer’ of our times.

                                                                                    Russell Cherrington August 2011