Henry Miller

• Works by Henry Miller
• Insomnia Series
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Insomnia Series Original Watercolors

In the mid 60s Dad became infatuated by a cabaret singer from Japan named Hoki Tokuda. He would spend hours at the piano bar in the Imperial Gardens Restaurant in Hollywood, listening to Hoki sing. He eventually wooed and married her. In 1965-6 he got insomnia worrying about the relationship and wrote a small book called Insomnia or the Devil at Large and during those sleepless nights painted a dozen watercolors, the Insomnia series.

In Insomnia or the Devil at Large he describes the paintings by saying, “They reflect the varying moods of three in the morning. Some were sprinkled with bird seed, some with songes, and some with mensonges. Some dripped from the brush like pink arsenic; others clogged up on me and came out as welts and bruises. Some were organic, some inorganic, but they were all intended to lead their own life in the garden of Abracadabra.”