How does Leonardo's theory of chance images, "accidental" inspiration, relate to clouds? In Cloud Conversations & Image Stories, Margaret A. Harrell weaves her own cloud photography into the art history of chance images, bringing in related drawings, scrying, and our relationship to Mother Nature. Regarding Robert Desnos' trance drawings, Andre Bréton called the "tangled web of lines" a result of chance, but the figures that "appear suddenly from this chaos," he said, were "born somewhat like those one sees in clouds or in the cracks in walls." Soak up the beauty as these clouds reveal images, many of which look like paintings. In nooks, in corners, of the photo, an unexpected face or whole scene appears. Harrell began photography, walking in the steps of dreams that showed her looking up, seeing scenes unfold, shifting panoramas everyone else failed to notice. One day the dream stepped into reality. In this book, Harrell gives Leonardo da Vinci a prominent role, as he found clouds and other nondescript stimulants to the imagination useful. He had a theory about stains, blots, clouds, as have other artists, such as Victor Hugo. Harrell brings them in, joining with her to take on a relatively untackled topic in art history and creativity: where creation comes from. She asks repeatedly whose images is she photographing? Why do they appear to her in clouds but not on a blank canvas? Printed in full Premium color, each image composed only of sunlight dazzles down on the page.
Harrell, Margaret: - "Margaret Ann Harrell was born in North Carolina and educated academically at Duke University (BA) and Columbia University (MA). She did postgraduate work at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich (1984-'87), followed by energy studies and investigations that continue to this day. She is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow. For years, she lived abroad, in Morocco and Europe, returning to Raleigh, NC, to live in 2001. After that, she became an advanced-meditation light-body and luminous-body teacher - in the Orin-DaBen LuminEssence work. Margaret was a copyeditor/assistant editor at Random House, New York City, often to first-book writers who later became prominent, such as Hunter S. Thompson, who became a personal friend. Introduced to parapsychology by Dr. J. B. Rhine at Duke University, she eventually found a part of her calling in exploring the meaning and boundaries of consciousness/unconsciousness. Margaret is in demand as a speaker. Most recently, at the launch at the Canessa Gallery in San Francisco in July 2021 of her collector's coffee table book, "The 'Hell's Angels' Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic," in collaboration with Ron Whitehead, US National Beat Poet Laureate - published by Norfolk Press. In 2022, her lifetime collection "Particle Pinata Poems" was published as by Saeculum University Press/A Published in Heaven Series Book. In cloud photography, she has exhibited in Romania, Italy, Bruges (Belgium), and New York City. All of her photographs express a fascination with the sun. Her biography and cloud giclee photographs were also many times in Marquis Who's Who in Modern American Art, as well as Who's Who in the World. For several years she has been a VIP presenter at the Gonzofest (Louisville). Margaret, a longtime freelance book editor, now edits additionally for authors in the Self-Publishing School. For a fuller picture of her, see https: //margaretharrell.com."
