1988 The Fiction of the Leaves

I started to read Harold Bloom at this time. I had come upon him through reading Derrida and other Literary Criticism at the time, like Structualism, and Northrop Frye which I was interested in.

Bloom lead me to Wallace Stevens whom I had read a bit of.

The artist, Louisa Chase was walking back from Pearl Paint covered in paint, this was a few years before. We stopped on the street, taling of this and that and she told me of a poet I would like, his book was called, Poems at the End of the Mind, she scrawled it on a piece of paper I still have somewhere. The real title is, The Palm at the End of the Mind.

We'll I've been reading Stevens since and Bloom's book on him has lead me to a life of reading. I now have read most books of Stevens criticism.

Bloom also in The Breaking of the Vessels, a book of lectures, has a wonderful essay, called Transumption, Toward a diachronic Rhetoric (Blanks, Leaves, Cries). One of my all time favorites. My next paintings came alot from thinking about this lecture.







Harold always said my, Clouds, leaves, waves. comes from Shelley's West Wind but then it sounds a lot like, well one sees a bit how influence works.

I had spent a month in Italy making watercolors of grape leaves and such in the sunset, and going to Museums. I first called the paintings, Italian Cities.