Misty skies, rainy skies, skies at dawn or dusk, cloudy skies or azure skies: in this exhibition, based on her latest book Ciels, published in autumn 2025 by Albin Michel Jeunesse, Charline Collette invites us to look up and contemplate the changing face of the sky as time passes and weather conditions shift.
The walls of the Slow Galerie Luxembourg will host a selection of original illustrations from the book, landscapes gathered by the artist between Franche-Comté and Brittany, which will also be displayed on large fabric panels, created using traditional printing techniques, offering a light-hearted counterpoint to the precision and delicacy of the small-format paintings. The plates from Ciels will be accompanied by other works by the artist, drawn from previous albums or previously unseen pieces, all of which give pride of place to the various states of the sky: starry skies, clear skies, sunsets and moonrises…
In joyful shades of blue, red and orange, Charline Collette depicts the ever-changing face of the sky as it shifts with the weather. In her paintings, the artist combines watercolour washes with flat areas of gouache: between transparency and intensity, the colour—dense and vibrant—offers us the spectacle of dazzling sunbeams, skies ablaze or washed by rain, the depth of nocturnal darkness or the splendour of the Northern Lights... From dawn to dusk, we delight in the beauty of light, in all its forms.
The exhibition, like a stroll through the day, invites us to take the time to appreciate, as we gaze beyond the horizon into the vastness of the sky, the charms of the cycles of fair and foul weather. Charline Collette’s Les Ciels, a true ode to nature and life, offers a sensitive and poetic take on meteorological phenomena and the way they affect the earth and landscapes. It reminds us of the beauty of the world’s ever-changing nature, and that a shower is always followed by a break in the clouds.
The book has been awarded the ‘Le livre pour grandir’ prize.
Text written by Juliette Capieu