Hi, I'm Clive Barker. This is my house in Beverly Hills. And down here is my painting studio, which not enough for a lot of people to get to see, so come on down with me. Some old paintings up on the walls here. And downstairs work, which is in progress for Aberat 2, the sequel to Aberat, which will be coming out next September. Aberat 2 days of magic nights of war. I have ten paintings left to finish and a week to finish the map. I had an exhibition organized at a wonderful space called Leylusta Jesus. Leyls of Jesus here in LA. And I've wear my exhibit before, a rotic work. And I was going to do another exhibition of a rotic work. And I just started painting. These pictures I'll show you when we go next door to what I call the gallery house, you know, what those first paintings were. They came without invitation. They just started to appear on the canvas. I know that sounds weird, but it really is how it was. I was painting at night. I was coming down here starting to paint these pictures. I hadn't worked in oils before, so there was a fumbling quality. There is still a fumbling quality about what I do. But there's something about the process, which immediately made me feel happy. I was really enjoying making these characters, really enjoying making these worlds. And after I'd done maybe 50, 60 paintings, maybe, I went to my publishers and I said, I think I have a world here I'd like to write about. I think I could do a book here, originally it was going to be just one book. I had a name for that world, Abarat. I don't know where it came from, but I kind of liked it. And I figured I would do one book with a lot of illustrations and it would be cool. And then, of course, it grew. This is the largest of the projects I've undertaken, which has grown and grown to the point where I'm now just about, you catch me about halfway through. And I've been at it six years now. So I have, I think I'll say to you guys about 450 paintings and I finished the second book and I delivered the second book. And you know, sometimes when I think I could evaporate into Abarat. My steak knives. I don't eat steak until they get turned to artistic purpose. And if you look closely at the paintings in the first Abarat book, you'll find that they're covered in scratches. And my jeans, as you can see, are covered in paint. One of the cool things the scratching does is it brings through another level, another color from behind the paint that I've just put on so that the canvas kind of has a kind of extra energy gains a kind of energy from the scratches. I was one of my great passions is, is a Goya, Spanish painter. And he used to paint sometimes three paintings a day. And he would paint with his fingers, he would paint with a palette knife. He would paint with brushes sometimes. But really, he kind of taught me that really whatever makes the mark is what's important. It's a very physical business. It's kind of athletic in a weird way. Particularly, this canvas is like this. This scale, later on, I'll show you some much bigger canvases. See, I don't know how close you can get on this, but I'm scratching away this red and it's just bringing through this lovely blue. Can you get that? It's kind of fun. And it just gives this whole thing a kind of energy, which you wouldn't otherwise have. My idea of, I guess, my experience, my training where artists concern is this. It's a very kind of physical, sweaty, smelly, dusty business. I love being in this world, except when the painting stone work. And I have to trash something that pisses me off. But most of the time, it's a very satisfying process. And it's, I'm just getting, getting out of myself. Something very satisfying about skulls. Something nicely simple about skulls. You know that white circle and then two black circles. Two more little circles. And then, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there it is. What a great sense of design God had. Behind me is the largest of the paintings that I have painted thus far for the, for the quartet, though I plan one much larger picture, which is just in my head right now. This is, this is a painting of the archipelago of Arlaborath. And for people who don't know anything about the books, really they concern a girl called Candy Quackenbush, who is snatched away from her home in chicken town, Minnesota, which she thinks is about the most boring place on earth. This is Candy Quackenbush, who's, uh,