Art gallery owner Thomas Negovan is Kickstarting a limited edition volume of Clive Barker’s art to coincide with a showing of Barker’s work. The book is limited to 1,000 hardcover books plus 100 special Signed and Numbered Bookplate editions. The Kickstarter campaign opened 7 January and closes 10 February. The goal of $35,000 is almost met already, with 148 backers pledging $26,811. 98 backers have already pledged at least $75 for the hardcover book, and at least 30 backers have pledged $300 or more for the slipcased, bookplate edition.

Negovan describes the project: “For over twenty years the imagination of Clive Barker has been hailed as a genius by a generation of creatives including such notable visionaries as Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro.  But where does Clive Barker find his primal inspiration?

Clive has said from his first interviews that he keeps a brush and ink next to his bed to capture fragments of dreams, and that his stories originate as visuals first- the works on canvas are more often than not Clive’s inital introduction to the characters and universes that he then picks up a pen to illuminate.  The most recent example of this is his world of Abarat:

“I’m painting these pictures in the expectation that… interesting, strange characters and landscapes will come into my mind and into my mind’s eye and appear on the canvas through the brush. There is something willfully strange about this process- that you stand back at the end of a night’s work and you look at something and you say, ‘Where did that come from?’ I mean, I’m not the only artist who does that – lots of artists do that, I know. And it’s been wonderful because if I had created Abarat from words- if I’d written Abarat and then illustrated it… it would not be anything like as rich or as complex or as contradictory a world as it is. Because this is a world which has been created from dream visions…  What I’m doing is finding stories that match the shape of my dreams.”

IMAGINER is the first comprehensive volume of the artwork of Clive Barker.  Featuring over 75 artworks and over 160 pages, the book will be a gorgeous large format of 10″ x 13″ inches.  There have been marginal explorations of Clive’s artwork in the past, but the most important part of this project is that the book is composed of entirely ALL NEW and ULTRA HIGH RESOLUTION image captures.  The detail is impeccable, and Clive flatteringly declared the difference in detail of the new captures compared to previously printed ones like the difference between “chalk and cheese”.  (Which means they’re really, really good!)

For more information, or to join the project, see this page.