Opinion

What influences shaped the young aspiring painter into a world-renowned talent - what so many interviewers like to refer to as a "Renaissance" talent due to its complete disregard for the boundaries of media? What influences shape the man today as the work treads ever more spiritual and metaphysical paths, as the outsider journeys beyond the limits and returns to report the glorious sights that might await us there should we choose to follow the same paths this shaman has carved out?
We've pulled together some of our favourite quotes on recurring topics on the pages linked below. They give a snapshot at a particular time of the thought processes behind the creativity but need to be read in the knowledge that opinions change; what seems an important influence in one context is simply an anecdote in another and that, ultimately, these insights may enable a background picture to be drawn which illuminates the books, screenplays and artwork...

"Let me say at the start: It's all the work of another man.
"I wrote none of these books. I made none of these films. Nor drew the drawings, nor opined at such length on death, sex and the human condition. For one thing, I'm not so contradictory as this other Clive Barker... A productive pretender, who comments glibly on any subject addressed to him. I, you understand, would be more circumspect. I'd choose to keep my peace more often than this Other does, and when I did choose to speak, my sentences would be honed to perfection before I let them on the air."

Afterword, Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden, June 1989