The Cloud Appreciation Society

January 3 2016

I celebrated the end of the year with a day alone in nature and hours of intense cloud appreciation. Laying there on my back I was moved to tears by this ephemeral beauty we can only grasp if we really pause for a moment. It is then we might realize, we don’t live beneath the sky, we live within it.

Listen to the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and his impassioned plea to live life with our head in the clouds:
Gavin Pretor-Pinney on TED

And here’s a selection of cloudscapes from around the world:

De Es Schwertberger
Heavy Light

Over more than fifty years of creating, Schwertberger’s themes and painting style evolve continuously. The path led from a figurative fantastic realism to an almost abstract, process-like creative flow.

Jean Delville
The Age Of Splendor

Jean Delville was a Belgian painter who painted heavily symbolic scenes with a occult oriented spiritual perspective.

Orgyan Chopel
New Visions in Thangkas

Orgyan Chopel translates cryptic Buddhism into a simplified language of symbols, easier to understand and accept.

Dying to Know
The Mystical World

This book is leading you on travels in a mysterious and visionary world.

Jon Han
Death and Transfiguration

The art of dying, the experience of letting go all that is known is almost forgotten in our culture.

Kirlian Photography
The blaze of the force

Kirlian believed that images created by Kirlian Photography might depict a conjectural energy field or aura, that surrounds all living things.

Molly Greene
False Vegetation Gods

I hope that I’m starting to play in that space between conventional ideas of what a human should be and what a human could be.

Marjorie Cameron
Songs for the Witch Woman

Cameron was an American artist, poet, actress, and occultist who emerged as a key figure in the California counterculture movement in the 1950s and 60s.

Craig Burrows
The Invisible Light

Craig Burrows photographs plants and flowers using a type of photography called UVIVF or ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence.

Roger Dean
Floating Dreamlands

Roger Dean is best known for his work on posters and album covers for musicians, which he began painting in…

Viviane Sassen
Unfortunately Fashion

This is as fashion as it gets on DOP. But Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen‘s work is extraordinary and transcends the common.

Rebel Wisdom
Sensemaking in the Time of Chaos

Rebel Wisdom uncovers the most rebellious ideas in philosophy, human potential and transcendence to find direction through the chaos of the time.

Renzo Martens
Enjoy Poverty

Renzo Martens’ Enjoy Poverty is one of the most provocative films that have been circulating the art world since its release in 2009.

On Yoga
The Architecture of Peace

Michael O’Neill’s quest to capture the essence of yoga spans time, space, and peoples.

The Media-Shaman Manifesto

The following manifesto is a testimony of an awakened youth movement realizing its power. Born from the European rave culture…

Lennart Nilsson
A Child is Born

The mere fact that you exist is quite awesome. The way you came into this existence is a unsurpassable miracle hard to believe.

Emil Bisttram
And the Transcendental Painting Group

These seekers of the inner spirit in outer things, wanted to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world.

Sabin Bălaşa
Dreams of Eternal Blue

Bălaşa paints a unique universe, full of archetypal figures and metaphysical themes. He called it Cosmic Romanticism.

Tyrone Williams
Beauty hidden in plain sight

The photography of Tyrone Williams is a reminder that beauty is to be found everywhere — In trash cans, puddles and rearview mirrors. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Viktor Schauberger
Comprehend and copy nature

Viktor Schauberger (1885 — 1958) was an exceptional inventor and scientist. His body of work revolves around water and it’s natural behavior and inherent energy.