Laura-May is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, music, photography, mosaic, and mixed media. Raised in Paris, she developed an early passion for both visual art and music thanks to her parents’ own art careers and frequent visits to museums and galleries. She later studied art and performance at Queen Mary University of London, earning a BA while beginning to merge scientific research with visual storytelling. She subsequently studied astronomy and astrophysics at the Paris Observatory, an experience that became central to the development of her artistic language.
Her work draws inspiration from astronomical research, tattoo culture, natural history illustration, engraving, and scientific imaging, while incorporating visual influences from pointillism, abstract expressionism, Art Nouveau, the Pre-Raphaelites, and artists such as Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky, Marie Laurencin, Henri Rousseau, and Niki de Saint Phalle. Combining scientific concepts with symbolic forms, her practice explores cosmology, planetary science, atmospheric phenomena, and humanity’s relationship to the natural universe..
In 2010, one of her works was exhibited at the Tate Modern through the Museum of Everything as part of the museum’s 10th anniversary celebrations. In 2017, she was invited to exhibit at London’s New Scientist Live, presenting paintings, astrophotography, and works from her Cosmic Entomology series. This series combines mosaic techniques, telescope imagery, entomology, and mixed media to explore theoretical physics and cosmological ideas such as supersymmetry, stellar evolution, and the Big Rip. In 2020, the series was featured by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the telescope’s 30th anniversary celebrations.
That same year, she was invited by New York creative agency Yummy Colours to participate in their annual Concept of the Year project, creating a large-scale painting inspired by spectroscopy entitled Fuel on Water. She later produced additional large-scale works for the series in 2021 and 2023, exploring atmospheric optics, astrometry, and galactic collisions. In 2021, she also appeared as the featured painter in the music video for the song Fine Lines by Derek Day. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions internationally, including at the Parisian astronomy hub “Le Monde de l’Observation”.
Her scientific and astronomical artwork can be found on the covers of science publications and academic review books, including “Machine Learning for Small Bodies in the Solar System”, published by Elsevier. In 2025, she created a large public mural for Exoplanet Day in Pasadena, celebrating planetary science and public engagement with astronomy.
In 2023, following a demanding trek through the volcanic valleys and mountains of Iceland while carrying more than 20 kilograms of equipment, Laura-May became the first known artist to paint an active volcanic eruption entirely in situ while simultaneously sampling molten lava on the canvas at the Litli-Hrútur eruption of Fagradalsfjall. The experience further expanded her exploration of geology, planetary processes, and observational fieldwork within artistic practice.
In 2024, she began her Stormscapes series, a collection of watercolor-inspired paintings created during active storm chases documenting severe weather systems across the American plains. During one expedition, she painted a tornado live in situ near Mutual, Oklahoma.
Between 2025 and 2026, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Griffith Observatory, she created “12 to 13 to 90”, a series of thirteen paintings produced during Local Noon solar transits at the Observatory, each dedicated to a zodiacal constellation and inspired by by the human legacy of observation and celestial mechanics.
In summer 2025, while traveling through Chile as an ACEAP Astronomy Ambassador, she created a series of observational paintings during nighttime visits to major observatories, including the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope on Cerro Tololo. The project culminated in the creation of an artwork painted at an altitude of 5,000 meters at the summit facilities of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the Atacama Desert.
Alongside her visual art practice, Laura-May continues to develop a new body of paintings inspired by Solar Cycle 25 and her own solar observations conducted through hydrogen-alpha telescopes, while also working on an illustrated poetry book.
Her work draws inspiration from astronomical research, tattoo culture, natural history illustration, engraving, and scientific imaging, while incorporating visual influences from pointillism, abstract expressionism, Art Nouveau, the Pre-Raphaelites, and artists such as Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky, Marie Laurencin, Henri Rousseau, and Niki de Saint Phalle. Combining scientific concepts with symbolic forms, her practice explores cosmology, planetary science, atmospheric phenomena, and humanity’s relationship to the natural universe..
In 2010, one of her works was exhibited at the Tate Modern through the Museum of Everything as part of the museum’s 10th anniversary celebrations. In 2017, she was invited to exhibit at London’s New Scientist Live, presenting paintings, astrophotography, and works from her Cosmic Entomology series. This series combines mosaic techniques, telescope imagery, entomology, and mixed media to explore theoretical physics and cosmological ideas such as supersymmetry, stellar evolution, and the Big Rip. In 2020, the series was featured by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the telescope’s 30th anniversary celebrations.
That same year, she was invited by New York creative agency Yummy Colours to participate in their annual Concept of the Year project, creating a large-scale painting inspired by spectroscopy entitled Fuel on Water. She later produced additional large-scale works for the series in 2021 and 2023, exploring atmospheric optics, astrometry, and galactic collisions. In 2021, she also appeared as the featured painter in the music video for the song Fine Lines by Derek Day. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions internationally, including at the Parisian astronomy hub “Le Monde de l’Observation”.
Her scientific and astronomical artwork can be found on the covers of science publications and academic review books, including “Machine Learning for Small Bodies in the Solar System”, published by Elsevier. In 2025, she created a large public mural for Exoplanet Day in Pasadena, celebrating planetary science and public engagement with astronomy.
In 2023, following a demanding trek through the volcanic valleys and mountains of Iceland while carrying more than 20 kilograms of equipment, Laura-May became the first known artist to paint an active volcanic eruption entirely in situ while simultaneously sampling molten lava on the canvas at the Litli-Hrútur eruption of Fagradalsfjall. The experience further expanded her exploration of geology, planetary processes, and observational fieldwork within artistic practice.
In 2024, she began her Stormscapes series, a collection of watercolor-inspired paintings created during active storm chases documenting severe weather systems across the American plains. During one expedition, she painted a tornado live in situ near Mutual, Oklahoma.
Between 2025 and 2026, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Griffith Observatory, she created “12 to 13 to 90”, a series of thirteen paintings produced during Local Noon solar transits at the Observatory, each dedicated to a zodiacal constellation and inspired by by the human legacy of observation and celestial mechanics.
In summer 2025, while traveling through Chile as an ACEAP Astronomy Ambassador, she created a series of observational paintings during nighttime visits to major observatories, including the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope on Cerro Tololo. The project culminated in the creation of an artwork painted at an altitude of 5,000 meters at the summit facilities of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the Atacama Desert.
Alongside her visual art practice, Laura-May continues to develop a new body of paintings inspired by Solar Cycle 25 and her own solar observations conducted through hydrogen-alpha telescopes, while also working on an illustrated poetry book.
• Art Statement
• Lava Paintings
• Concept of the Year
• Paintings
• Cosmic Entomology
Capturing fleeting moments of the universe
Nebulae, galaxies and stars are ephemeral movements of the universe - like butterflies, whose brief beauty is admired, sometimes rendered timeless by entomology, the scientific study of insects and their preservation.
Found in museums as well as in homes, hung as artworks, I was awed by entomology boxes, full of insects glistening with a thousand colours—being both science and art. Many of us have equally admired the incredible capture of larger pieces of the universe by Hubble and other telescopes for the past thirty years.
Mirrors, their build and modernization, have played an important role in astronomy; it is thanks to them that we can see, as in my artworks, facets of the universe that are beyond our reach. These instruments have also given us keys to the start of time, the Big Bang and to the creative fracturing of the universe.
Look at your reflection, you have also been formed by and from this universe, between creation and destruction, analyzed by science and become art.
Found in museums as well as in homes, hung as artworks, I was awed by entomology boxes, full of insects glistening with a thousand colours—being both science and art. Many of us have equally admired the incredible capture of larger pieces of the universe by Hubble and other telescopes for the past thirty years.
Mirrors, their build and modernization, have played an important role in astronomy; it is thanks to them that we can see, as in my artworks, facets of the universe that are beyond our reach. These instruments have also given us keys to the start of time, the Big Bang and to the creative fracturing of the universe.
Look at your reflection, you have also been formed by and from this universe, between creation and destruction, analyzed by science and become art.
All boxes are made using the best-made world-famous entomology boxes from France and hermetically sealed. The butterflies are all created from real species and almost all accurate in size. Every box is unique and named on the back for the species and region of space. Visit www.instagram.com/CosmicEntomology for more.
Featured in the music video For Derek Day "Fine Lines" shot by Vicente Cordero — www.industrialfilms.com
