Constellations is a collection of eleven paintings, all measuring 1600mm by 1300mm and painted with oil on canvas, created between December 2025 and August 2026. A description of the series can be found below the image gallery.
Constellations
The eleven paintings presented here were created between December 2025 and August 2026. The series grew from my longstanding interest in astronomy and from spending time studying and navigating the night sky through the stars. The stories humans have attached to these stars for thousands of years became the starting point for the series.
Looking at the night sky is an experience that connects us to generations that came before us. Long before written records, people observed the same stars and created stories to understand, remember, and give meaning to what they saw. Most cultures have myths associated with the stars, with many of the traditions surrounding the constellations having ancient origins.
The stories represented in these paintings are drawn primarily from Greek mythology, a tradition that has had a profound influence on the cultural world in which I was raised. With important sources in Greek and Mesopotamian history and, in some cases, traditions that may reach further back.
Seven of the eleven constellations belong to the Zodiac—Aries, Sagittarius, Pisces, Virgo, Leo, Taurus, and Aquarius—while the remaining four, Pegasus, Andromeda, Lyra, and Orion, belong to the broader group of constellations recorded by Ptolemy in the second century CE.
Many of these myths exist in multiple versions. For each painting, I have chosen a particular version and, where possible, included the earliest known written account of the story. These written sources, however, often represent traditions that existed orally long before they were recorded. The stories have therefore already passed through countless generations of interpretation and transformation before reaching us.
This continuity is central to the series. I see these paintings as a form of artistic homage to the generations who preserved these stories, while also becoming another link in that chain of interpretation. For this reason, the figures are generally depicted without clothing or other details that would place them within a particular historical period, allowing them to exist outside a specific time.
At several points, I have also taken creative liberties, introducing my own interpretations and moments into the myths. These interventions are intended as a personal mark within a much larger tradition.
In Heracles and Leo, for example, I invent a scene that is not attested in the surviving sources: a moment in which the lion does not harm Heracles, creating a different possibility within the familiar story.
In Sagittarius, Prometheus experiences an existential moment of crisis, bringing together the weight of life, the confrontation with death, and sexual attraction as powerful aspects of human existence.
In Andromeda, I draw on the Cubist idea of depicting multiple moments within a single image. Andromeda appears both bound to the rock and, simultaneously, after her rescue, riding away on Pegasus.
Through these interventions, I hope to create a space between the familiar and the unexpected—to spark curiosity about the stories behind these constellations and to allow traditions that have endured for thousands of years to remain alive and relevant in the present.
Camille Ulysses Châtelain
August 2026