Colin J. Clayton was born in London in 1963 and grew up in the vibrant afterglow of the colourful circus that was the swinging sixties, within earshot of Chelsea’s King’s Road, where art, fashion, and new music progression conspired to stir a bright new age of spirit. Encouraged by his mother, an actress and cabaret singer, he developed an early fascination with performance art, film, and sculpture.
He was captivated by the special effects art of Ray Harryhausen and the science-fiction wonder of films such as Planet of the Apes, The Time Machine, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. From the start, his imagination gravitated toward the surreal, the visionary. By the late seventies and early eighties, Colin was part of London’s underground art and music scene. He painted, sculpted, and played guitar in bands, absorbing the shifting progressions of British ingenuity across a broad spectrum of art and sound. Over time, he began to pursue a single purpose: to merge art, sound, and visual creation into what he later named The Art of Orbism.
Orbism began in dot-painting experiments and evolved into a modern-primitive approach that fused instinct, rhythm, and surreal abstraction. His art, poetry, comedy, and music became one continuum. Spheres, orbs, and celestial forms became recurring motifs, reflecting what he describes as cosmic frequencies made visible, along with the primordial birth of galaxies and birds, rendered through colour, motion, and vision. This soon extended into CGI animated music video experiments, where his oil paintings, clay sculptures, vocal and instrumental soundscapes could transform into moving visions of art, evolving into The Art Of Orbism.
Shakespeare, Poe, Shelley, and H.G. Wells became early influences, alongside the poetical lyrics of bands in the late seventies and eighties. Colin’s work fused his: painting, performance art, Music and storytelling, guided by a simple creed: if you can visualise it, you can create it. From these visions, his creative path expanded into poetry, screenwriting, and film production, eventually leading to Tomb of Tales, an idea first conceived in the 1990s and realised through decades of artistic fusion.
