Henry Millers jeugd speelt zich af in Brooklyn, New York. Hij breekt zijn studie na twee maanden af en neemt verschillende baantjes aan. In 1917 trouwt hij met Beatrice Sylvas Wickens. Ze krijgen een dochter.
in 1920 komt Miller terecht bij de Western Union Telegraph Service, als personeelsmanager voor de bezorgdienst. Hij onderneemt pogingen om te schrijven maar vindt zichzelf op dit vlak (en de wereld in het algemeen) een grote mislukking, op kunst na. In een relatie met June Edith Smith Mansfield krijgt hij voldoende geld bij elkaar om in 1930 naar Parijs af te reizen, naar de 'beschaafde wereld'.
In Parijs heeft hij het niet makkelijk. Baantjes als "proof-reader" en de goedgunstigheid van zijn vrienden houden hem in leven. In 1931schrijft hij in de Villa Seurat in Montparnasse zijn eerste roman, 'Tropic of Cancer' (Kreeftskeerkring), die in 1934 wordt uitgegeven. Daarna volgen 'Black Spring' ('Zwarte Lente') en de zusterroman van 'Tropic of Cancer'; 'Tropic of Capricorn' ('Steenbokskeerkring'). In de Parijse tijd heeft hij ook een relatie met Anaïs Nin.
In 1940 keert hij terug naar de Verenigde Staten. Hij leeft dan voornamelijk in Big Sur, Californië, waar hij in 1980 sterft.
De romans zijn levendig geschreven en bevatten veel kritiek op morele en culturele waarden. Vanwege obsceniteit worden de boeken in de Verenigde Staten verboden. De romans worden Amerika ingesmokkeld, waardoor Miller een underground-reputatie krijgt.
Na een reeks van rechtszaken verklaart het Amerikaanse Hooggerechtshof in 1964 het oordeel van het Staatsgerechtshof nietig; een van de gebeurtenissen in de schakel die leiden tot de seksuele revolutie.
Naast de 'Tropics' zijn ook de trilogie 'Sexus', 'Plexus', 'Nexus' en 'Quiet days in Clichy' in het Nederlands vertaald.
Henry V. Miller was born December 26, 1891 in Yorkville, NYC. His parents were from Germany, his mother from the north, his father from Bavaria. He lived in Brooklyn during his school years. Tried working in his father’s tailor shop, here he developed his love of fine clothes. He was always a dapper dresser. His life is chronicled both by himself through his books & by his fellow authors. I think his life was remarkable in so many ways. He had to fight mediocrity and poverty, working at many mundane jobs. He started to write in his 30’s, late for a writer. When he discovered Europe, particularly Paris, he became friends with writers like Anais Nin, Alfred Perles, Lawrence Durrell. In the 1930’s he wrote & published “Tropic of Cancer”, “Black Spring”, “Aller Retour New York”, & “Tropic of Capricorn”. The floodgates were open, he was a WRITER…
A young Henry Miller
with his parents and
his sister Lauretta.
Dad lived in France, Greece, NYC, Beverly Glen, Big Sur & Pacific Palisades. He was a prolific writer, disciplined & driven to create. Painting watercolors was his way to relax, he didn’t consider himself an ‘artist’ but loved to paint. He made thousands of paintings, gave most of them away. He also learned how to etch & make silk screens. Nuns from The Immaculate Heart School came to the house in LA & taught him how to make the silk screens.
Dad balanced the cerebral with the physical. He loved riding bicycles, he would ride out to Coney Island and he raced in the Velodrome. He was still riding in his 70’s in the Palisades. He was a great walker, walking all over New York and the wonderful arrondisements of Paris. In Big Sur he would trek down the road to get the mail & groceries, hauling it back up the hill. My brother & I would run to his studio in the afternoons, Dad was always happy to take us up in the hills for long walks. Sometimes he told us stories, one I recall about a little rich girl who lived in the city, a fantasy which fascinated us, being country kids.
I only knew my Dad for 35 years, the last third of his life. But am so fortunate to have the legacy he created. In my home I am surrounded by his wonderful paintings, they are a pleasure to look at. His books are an endless source of knowledge and enjoyment in self discovery. One can open to any page & find some phrase or passage that rings true. Even his book titles are inspiring, he definitely had a way with words - “Stand Still Like The Hummingbird”, “The Devil in Paradise”, “Remember to Remember”, “The Wisdom of the Heart”, “The Air Conditioned Nightmare”, “The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder”.
Dinner conversations were always lively. There was a constant stream of friends and fans, also the women who would come to the Ocampo house & prepare special meals for Dad. I liked it when just the two of us could talk, Dad would recommend the latest authors he was reading, or writers he thought I might like. His taste in literature was eclectic, from obscure Marie Corelli to Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse to H Rider Haggard. He gave me the Modern Library collection of authors whom he admired, Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Carson McCuller… He loved Walt Whitman, Nostradamus, M Proust, Rimbaud, Balzac, Stendahl… He had a great memory & could pull favorite passages out of the air. His “Books in my Life” is a good read & source of novels & authors. My admiration, respect and love for my father grows as the years go by.
Your daughter,
Valentine
Valentine
June 7, 2005 marks twenty-five years since my Dad passed away. It seems impossible but I miss him more each year. He was a great listener as well as a fascinating raconteur. He had a very warm persona, treating everyone he came in contact with as though they had something special to say and often they did. His curiosity in his fellow man came across as being genuinely interested in all people. He was generous in every way, from sharing his home, giving to anyone who asked for money (if he had it), he gave his watercolors away, happy that they were admired. He had many friends throughout his life that were true lifelong relationships. He was a loyal friend. He loved to laugh and share meals and wine, always exchanging ideas about literature and art. He truly enjoyed life and made the world a better place by his wholehearted embrace of the world. He was tolerant, kind, inspiring, droll, genuine, loving, intelligent, thoughtful, a wonderful combination of many talents, humble as well as proud.
I love you Dad,
Your daughter,
Valentine
Valentine
Wow. Twenty five years! Time flies. Time moves on. Time is nothing. Time is all. I don't know any more. When I was fifteen, twenty one seemed a mile or more away. Now, I am fifty six and time has zipped passed me so quickly, I never even felt it.
But time stopped on June 7th, 1980. It stopped with a bad phone call. It stopped because I knew what the phone call was before I picked up the receiver. It stopped because the voice on the other end confirmed what I already knew. Dad was dead. Not any more alive. Dead. Not living. Dead. Not talking, dead. All dead.
I know many people that have lost loved ones. All sad. All of them sending people into places they have never been, for the most part. It is something one becomes a bit accustomed to. But this was different. Very different.
Inside my brain, I almost laugh at the Obits I read from time to time. Every Mom, every Dad, states that there son or daughter, or best friend was the Greatest!!! Always. Ever read an Obit with someone saying there child was a jerk, a born felon, a criminal, a worthless person??? NO!!
But most people are just that. People that pass on. Be it by accident, murder, War, whatever. Just another body, going through some biological process… Moving through the process of inert, to alive, to dead… A few people say goodbye, so long, and guns are fired, people weep, and so it goes. And we all move on.
Not this time. My father actually meant something to the World he lived in… He actually contributed something genuine and good to the public. He gave all of himself to help something more than his Family or friends. He gave his life, to Art and made Art out of his life.
All the press about Cancer or Sexus, or Murder the Murderer, says nothing about the man that wrote those books or stories. He was one person that I could say, was better in person, even, than his books. And I met many of his contemporaries. No one stood a candle to him.
He knew more about being alive, being a person, being a human being, than anyone that I have witnessed. I put him on the scale of Ghandi, Mandela, Ali… He didn’t make speeches, he spoke to you… To your heart and desires. He spoke to your inner self that was striving to escape the bonds of parenthood, childhood, social mores, and Nationalism… There is no doubt why he loved France. More even than his own country in some ways.
My country, my father’s country, is so full of hypocrisy, he had to leave for awhile. It was never because he hated it. It was for the very best of reasons… It failed to live up to what it could have been. It betrayed him… It betrayed me… It has betrayed all of us.
There are no voices left in this country. So honor those that spent their entire lives trying to tell it how to uphold its potential… Because now, there are nothing but greed and powermongers left… And they are killing us and the rest of the world. Heed some oldtimer’s advice.
The greatest gift that a man, a father, can pass on, is interest. To be astounded by what has already happened, and to look forward to a bright future. We are all dead here now.
Always Merry and Bright… Don’t You Know? HMMMMMMMMMMMM!!
Tony Miller May 2005
Tony Miller May 2005
Here is an artist who reestablishes the potency of illusion by gaping at the open wounds, by courting the stern psychological reality which man seeks to avoid through recourse to the oblique symbolism of art. Here, the symbols are laid bare, presented almost as naively and unblushingly by this over—civilized individual as by the well—rooted savage. It is no false primitivism which gives rise to this savage lyricism. It is not a retrogressive tendency, but a swing forward into unbeaten areas.
– ANAIS NIN’S Preface to the first edition of Tropic of Cancer
Henry is like a mythical animal. His writing is flamboyant, torrential, chaotic, treacherous, and dangerous. Our age has need of violence I enjoy the power of his writing, the ugly, destructive, fearless cathartic strength. This strange mixture of worship of life, enthusiasm, and passionate interest in everything, energy, exuberance, laughter, and sudden destructive storms baffle me. Everything is blasted away: hypocrisy, fear, pettiness, falsity. It is an assertion of instinct. He uses the first person, real names; he repudiates order and form and fiction itself. He writes in the uncoordinated way we feel, on various levels at once.
It is an effort to transcend the rigidities and patterns made by the rational mind. He can be swept off his feet by a book, a person, an idea. He is a musician and a painter. He notices everything. He selects from everything only what can be enjoyed. He finds joy in everything.
– “The Diary of Anais Nin” volume one, 1931-1934
1957 watercolor by Henry Miller
Henri als vier-jarige
Henry with his sister Loretta, his mother and father.
Henry Miller and his family on 1063 Decatur Street, circa 1905
June Mansfield Miller (Henry Miller's second wife and forever muse)
Janina Martha Lepska ,zijn derde echtgenote
Miller en zijn vierde echtgenote Eve Mcclure
Miller met zijn vijfde echtgenote Hoki Tokuda
Henry Valentine Miller was born to Heinrich Miller and Louise Nieting on Saturday, December 26, 1891 in Manhattan, New York City, 85th street, near the East River. His family moved to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the 14th Ward and then finally to 'Decatur Street', a part of Brooklyn known as Bushwick, the place he would later refer to as "the street of early sorrows".
Miller spent many years in Paris, where his autobiographical and sexually explicit novels Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn were published in the 1930's. They were banned in the U.K. and the U.S. While in Paris he began a famous affair with writer Anaïs Nin.
In 1940, Miller returned to New York, and spent the next four years searching for a place he could tolerate, finally settling in Big Sur, California. He wrote the trilogy known as 'The Rosy Crucifixion' (the novels Sexus, Plexus and Nexus).
His early novels were finally published in the U.K. and the U.S. in the 1960's, and Miller
Miller spent many years in Paris, where his autobiographical and sexually explicit novels Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn were published in the 1930's. They were banned in the U.K. and the U.S. While in Paris he began a famous affair with writer Anaïs Nin.
In 1940, Miller returned to New York, and spent the next four years searching for a place he could tolerate, finally settling in Big Sur, California. He wrote the trilogy known as 'The Rosy Crucifixion' (the novels Sexus, Plexus and Nexus).
His early novels were finally published in the U.K. and the U.S. in the 1960's, and Miller
became a pop culture icon
"From five to ten were the most important years of my life;"Miller said. "I lived in the street and acquired the typical American gangster spirit."
From an early age he rebelled against his parents' devotion to work and a 'respectable' life. In 'Black Spring' (1936; United States publication, 1963), Miller wrote that "I was born in the street and raised in the street. . . In the street you learn what human beings really are." Miller liked to read from an early age, finishing many adventure stories as well as classics of literature. He was an excellent student in high school and enrolled at the City College of New York, only to leave after two months. From 1909 to 1924 he tried different jobs, including working for a cement company, assisting his father at a tailor shop, and sorting mail for the Post Office. While in the messenger department of Western Union, he started writing his first novel 'Clipped Wings' (1922).
1910, Henry Miller began an affair with his "first mistress", Pauline Chouteau of Phoebus, Virginia, a woman old enough to be his mother. Henry called her "the widow". In 1917, he married his first wife, Beatrice Sylvas Wickens from Brooklyn. She was a pretty young brunette who shared another of his passions, playing the piano. With Beatrice he had a daughter, Barbara. He had also a brief affair with his mother-in-law
In 1923 Henry Miller was about to meet his most enduring muse, a dance girl named June Mansfield (called "Mona" or"Mara" in his novels). She was a dark, beautiful Jewish femme fatale. They met at a Times Square dance parlor 'Wilson', when she was 21 and he was 31. Disregarding the rules, he fell madly in love with her, divorced Beatrice in 1924, and married June. She encouraged him to quit his job and start putting his efforts into writing.
"It must have been a Thursday night when I met her for the first time at the dance hall." —Henry Miller (Sexus) "Fell in love with June Edith Smith while she worked in a Broadway dance palace." —Henry Miller (My Life and Times) This marked the beginning of a tempestuous lifestyle in which he came to the brink of suicide, but also the time in which he was first free to give his full attention to writing. He quit his job, living off the money that June managed to get from other men. June fascinated Miller with her numerous intrigues with others, men and women alike
June Mansfield Miller (January 12, 1902 - February 1979)was the much written about and discussed second wife of Henry Miller. She was born in Bukovina, Austria-Hungary (of Romanian Gypsy origin as mentioned in Sexus) as Juliet Smerth, the daughter of Wilhelm and Frances Budd Smerth. She emigrated with her family to the United States and arrived there on July 10, 1907, aged five. She would reside in New York City for much of the rest of her life, excepting a tour of Europe and settling in Paris.
In 1930, determined to become a writer, Miller went to Paris alone, where he remained for nearly ten years with very little money. It was only there that Henry Miller would find his voice to become 'Henry Miller'. "Paris is simply an obstetrical instrument that tears the living embryo from the womb and puts it in the incubator", he wrote. Miller found himself surrounded by artists, philosophers, musicians and poets. The outrageously well-read Miller was suddenly in the company of others who'd also read Rabelais and Blake. And of course there were the women, too.
Everything he saw was an inspiration, everything brought the words flowing. He had no money, of course, but that didn't concern him. As he wrote in 'Tropic of Cancer' most famous passage: "I have no money, no resources, no hopes, I am the happiest man alive." "Paris is like a whore. From a distance she seems ravishing, you can't wait until you have her in your arms. And five minutes later you feel empty, disgusted with yourself. You feel tricked. I return to Paris with money in my pocket‚ a few hundred francs, which Collins had shoved in my pocket just as I was boarding the train." —Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) While in Paris, Henry Miller also befriended a woman who was to be his long time lover and occasional benefactor Anaïs Nin. Their relationship is ironically documented by Nin rather than Miller. Nin's diaries are filled with social engagements, their love affair and a love affair with Miller's wife, June. These stories were made famous in the film'Henry & June' from 1992 (June was portrayed by Uma Thurman).
"The art of living is based on rhythm - on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all the aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life.' The real function of the dance is metamorphosis." —Henry Miller
While living in Big Sur, Miller married two more of his eventual five wives, Janina Martha Lepska, with who he had one daughter Barbara, and in 1953 Eve McClure. With his two children, Tony and Valentine, Miller lived on Partington Ridge (also known as Anderson's Point). The house was on a plateau two thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean: "About fifty feet from the house, the land simply ended, and it was an abrupt decent to the sea far below." At this place in Miller's life he finished the work that immortalized Big Sur in the world of literature, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Henry Miller with his fourth wife Eve McClure
Henry Miller had always been facinated by the whole notion of the Geisha and dreamed of having a perfect Geisha for a wife. . . The ideal image of the devoted Oriental woman shimmered in his mind.
Henry Miller met Japanese jazz singer Hiroko (Hoki) Tokuda at a Hollywood bar when she had just arrived from Japan and she became his fifth wife in 1967. Miller was 75 at the time and Hoki was 27.
It was a fast game of table tennis that led to the romance, explained author Henry Miller, 75, after he maried his fifth, Hoki Tokuda, 27, on september 10 1967. And yesterday, after the wedding in Beverly Hills, they where back at the table for more tennis.
Hoki Tokuda was an attractive woman who was a cheesy lounge singer & wannabe actress working at a Los Angeles Japanese restaurant. Miller fell in love with some image he concocted & Hoki saw him for the patsy he was. All this woman did was tease & lead on Miller. He bought her a new white Jaguar that she quickly smashed up. Miller kept tossing money at her, and even went to Japan with her to try to use his fame there to promote Hoki. They separated in 1970 and finally divorced in 1977. 
"Going back in a flash over the women I've known. It's like a chain which I've forged out of my own misery. Each one bound to the other." —Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer)
"No appointments, no invitations for dinner, no program, no dough. The golden period, when I had not a single friend.—Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) ". . . I experience once again the splendor of those miserable days when I first arrived in Paris, a bewildered, poverty-stricken individual who haunted the streets like a ghost at a banquet." —Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) ". . . Everything comes back to me in a rush —the toilets that wouldn't work, the prince who shined my shoes, the Cinema Splendide where I slept on the patron's overcoat, the bars in the window, the feeling of suffocation, the fat cockroaches, the drinking and carousing that went on between times, Rose Cannaque and Naples dying in the sunlight."—Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer)
In 1940, Henry Miller returned to the United States, settling in Big Sur, California, and continued to produce vividly written works that challenged contemporary American cultural values and moral attitudes.
Miller fell in love with the rugged, isolated region, on his first visit in 1944, and decided to move there almost immediately. Upon his arrival in Big Sur, Miller wrote, "Here I will find peace. Here I shall find the strength to do the work I was made to do." He also became part of a literary and artistic community that included Emil White, Jaime de Angulo,Lillian Bos Ross and her husband Harrydick Ross, Ephraim Doner, and others. His first home on the coast was in the Log House, above Nepenthe near Anderson Creek (from May 1944 until January 1946). Within four years of his arrival, royalties from overseas enabled him to live comfortably in Big Sur, even providing him with the resources to purchase a house on Partington Ridge 
Henri Cartier-Bresson's portrait of Henry Miller on the cliffs of Big Sur.
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Dearest Brenda,
Does everything matter? Yes! The little things are often more important than the seeming big things. Do you follow me? If we had more faith we would not push so hard, we would be more confident, more serene. And to my mind serenity is greater than happiness. Happiness is a much over-rated word. Joy is the thing —or bliss. That 7th Heaven feeling. Agreed?
Your infatuated inamorata
—Henry V. Miller, Beloved of Brenda Venus (Miracle of Miracles)
Does everything matter? Yes! The little things are often more important than the seeming big things. Do you follow me? If we had more faith we would not push so hard, we would be more confident, more serene. And to my mind serenity is greater than happiness. Happiness is a much over-rated word. Joy is the thing —or bliss. That 7th Heaven feeling. Agreed?
Your infatuated inamorata
—Henry V. Miller, Beloved of Brenda Venus (Miracle of Miracles)
Henry Miller's last love was Brenda Venus, an actress, his letters to her"Dear Dear Brenda" were published in 1986
"True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself."—Henry Miller
"One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things." —Henry Miller
The last twenty years of Miller's life were spent in Pacific Palisades, Big Sur, Los Angeles. Brenda Venus cared for him during his final years, 1976 to 1980. Henry Miller died at the age of 88 on June 7, 1980, in his Pacific Palisades home, he was cremated and his ashes scattered off Big Sur, California
"One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things." —Henry Miller
The last twenty years of Miller's life were spent in Pacific Palisades, Big Sur, Los Angeles. Brenda Venus cared for him during his final years, 1976 to 1980. Henry Miller died at the age of 88 on June 7, 1980, in his Pacific Palisades home, he was cremated and his ashes scattered off Big Sur, California
Left: Miller with Salvator and Gala Dalí, the third man is Barnet Ruder.
(Photographed at Caresse Crosby's home in the summer of 1940
(Photographed at Caresse Crosby's home in the summer of 1940
| An avid water-colorist, Miller's writing feels as though he is painting pictures in words rather than telling a coherent story. The result is that his prose is poetry of a quality rarely attained. The words leap off the page, away from your eyes and mind, and you are left only with the events that Miller so colorfully relate. The event becomes a part of you, not something read but something felt, something experienced, something shared. There are few other writers who transform the art of writing into so powerful a means of personal expression. Henry Miller had always loved art, he began painting in the 1920s (before he began writing), after seeing some Turner prints in a Brooklyn department-store window. There was only one minor drawback: he couldn’t draw. It wasn’t long before he realized that what he lacked in draftsmanship, he made up for in color and composition sense. Henry Miller painted over 3000 watercolors in his lifetime. | ||||
Henry Miller, ‘Lips’, 1952 (watercolor and ink)
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| The Angel is my Watermark | ||||
"The object of these pages is to relate the genesis of a masterpiece. The masterpiece is hanging on the wall in front of me; it is dry now. I am putting this down to remember the process, because I shall probably never do another like it." "Well, begin! That's the thing. Begin with a horse! I have vaguely in mind the Etruscan horses I saw in the Louvre. (Note: in all the great periods of art the horse was very close to man!) I begin to draw. I begin naturally with the easiest part of the animal —the horse's ass. A little opening for the tail which can be stuck in afterwards. Hardly have I begun to do the trunk when I notice at once that it is too elongated. Remember, you are drawing a horse —not a liverwurst! Vaguely, vaguely it seems to me that some of those Ionian horses I saw on the black vases had elongated trunks; and the legs began inside the body, delineated by a fine stenciled line which you could look at or not look at according to your anatomical instincts. With this in mind I decided on an Ionian horse. But now fresh difficulties ensue. It's the legs. The shape of a horse's leg is baffling when you have only your memory to rely on. I can recall only about as much as from the fetlock down, which is to say, the hoof. To put meat on the hoof is a delicate task, extremely delicate. And to make the legs join the body naturally, not as if they were stuck on with glue. My horse already has five legs: the easiest thing to do is transform one of them into a phallus erectus. No sooner said than done. And now he's standing just like a terra cotta figure of the sixth century B.C." —Henry Miller (Black Spring) |  | |||
| "When I write, I work", Miller said, "but when I paint, I play". | ||||
'Shaking Cobwebs Out of the Sky'
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Henry Miller, 'Shaking Cobwebs Out of the Sky' Watercolor, (from Insomnia Series #3 of 12)
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| Henry Miller's Paint Box | ||||
“To paint is to love again. It’s only when we look with the eyes of love that we see as the painter sees. . . To see is not merely to look. One must look-see. See into and around.” —Henry Miller (To Paint is to Love Again) “I remember well the transformation which took place in me when first I began to view the world with the eyes of a painter. The most familiar things, objects which I had gazed at all my life, now became an unending source of wonder, and with the wonder, of course, affection.” —Henry Miller (To Paint is to Love Again “The watercolor has affinities with the sonnet, or the haiku, rather than the jeremiad. It captures the flux and essence, the flavor and perfume, rather than the substance. Ambience, that is what the watercolor renders par excellence.”—Henry Miller (To Paint is to Love Again) |  | |||
| Henry Miller painted for pleasure, enjoying the process of creating. His paintings were shown in exhibitions in the U.S., Japan & Europe. | ||||
Henry Miller, 'Always Merry and Bright'
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“You can look at things all your life and not see them really. This ‘seeing’ is, in a way, a ‘not seeing,’ if you follow me.
It is more of a search for something, in which, being blindfolded, you develop the tactile, the olfactory, the auditory senses —and thus see for the first time.”—Henry Miller, The Waters Reglitterized Henry Miller also wrote about painting watercolors, and the very titles of some of them reveal his excitement about painting: * To Paint is to Love Again* The Angel is my Watermark * The Waters Reglitterized* Paint as You Like and Die HappyMiller sold very few paintings during his lifetime; he often used his paintings for barter and traded them for watercolor supplies in New York, for cups of coffee in the streets of Paris, and for food and clothing in Big Sur, but mostly he gave away his paintings to friends and fans throughout the world. | |||
(Photo: William Webb)
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| Henry Miller 'To Paint is to Love Again' | ||||
Few people know that the famous author of Tropic of Cancerwas an accomplished and respected painter. In his own words and persona, and through rare and never before released footage and audio, this film offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of one of America's greatest authors and artists. Painting, like his writing, was a metaphor for living life to the fullest. And few people have lived with as much zest and passion as Henry Miller.
Settling down in California, Miller concentrated more on his other two passions: water color painting and Ping-Pong. Steadily painting about 150 water colors a year, Miller exhibited his work in California and on occasional trips to Europe. But even after painting for several years, Miller considered himself "a beginner", according to New York Times contributor Peter Bart, who quoted the artist as saying: "That's what fascinates me about painting. As a writer I know I can do what I want to do. As a painter I'm still going. There's more of a challenge." | ||||
| In his own words and persona, and through rare and never before released footage and audio, this unfinished film by Robert Snyder offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of Henry Miller. | ||||
Henry Miller's Paris Notebook
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 | "Painting is a game to me. I only know that I want to paint; I don't know anything more than that, really. I like the feel of the brusch in my hand. But what it is that I am about to paint, happens, I never know." —Henry Miller (My Life and Times, Painting) “The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts.”—Henry Miller (To Paint is To Love Again) Henry Miller lived his final years alone pursuing his lifelong interest in watercolor painting. When Henry Miller died in 1980, at the ripe old age of 89, he hadn’t held a steady job for almost 50 years. | |||
Miller's Paris Notebooks from 1932-1936, with manuscript, drawings, paintings and typed notes on ideas and resources for his writings.
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| Miller's List of Exhibitions | ||||
 | 1927 Exhibited water colors in June Mansfield's roman Tavern, Greenwich Village. 1943 Made two to three hundred water colors. Exhibited at Beverly Glen (The Green House), American Contemporary Gallery, Hollywood, with success. 1957 Exhibition of water colors at Gallery One, London. 1944 Exhibited water colors at Santa Barbara Museum of Art and in London. 1954 Traveling exhibition of water colors in Japan. 1957 Exhibition of water colors at Gallery One, London. 1962 Went to Berlin where I made ten copper plate etchings and more water colors at home of Renate Gerhardt. 1963 Began making silk screens with nuns at Immaculate Heart College, Hollywood. Made 115 water colors from March to end of July. 1965 Water color exhibition at Westwood Art Association, Los Angeles. 1967 Water color show at Daniel Gervis Gallery in Paris. Water color show in Uppsala Sweden.    | |||
Henry Miller painting (sensei)
Selfportraits: Henry Miller, 1946.
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