Inspired by the luminous architecture of the cosmos, Karen Tompkins’ Messier series transformed the 110 deep-sky objects catalogued by French astronomer Charles Messier into vivid, paintings of the night sky. Her research period for the series was spent in Paris at the Paris Observatory. The key component of her study was conducted at the historic Hôtel de Cluny, where Messier spent more than forty years observing with his telescope from the rooftop turret. Immersed in this extraordinary setting of what is now the Musée de Moyen Age, led to her delving into his meticulous sky surveys of celestial structures such as galaxies, nebulae and star clusters that he sought to distinguish from passing comets.

Drawing on this encounter with astronomical history in Paris, Tompkins reimagined Messier’s objects in space as radiant fields of color and form, reflecting on the “star stuff” that composes all matter and binds us to the vast, ecstatic pulse of nature. In the Messier series, scientific observation becomes an evocation of eternity, one that celebrates our enduring human awe before the infinite.