Featured image: Desert Night Sky, Derrick Helphenstine, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 in. / 30.48 x 30.48 cm.
Derrick Helphenstine’s acrylic paintings lift the veil between science and mysticism. Inspired by the vast geometry of the cosmos,
Derrick Helphenstine creates cosmic-inspired abstract paintings using acrylics to explore energy, myth, and celestial balance.
Helphenstine renders imagined nebulae and celestial phenomena with a painterly approach that fuses astronomical awe with human emotion. Through color, form, and fluid abstraction, his works explore the energetic structures of space, inviting viewers to contemplate creation, transformation, and the unseen order of the universe. This article highlights three recent works: Eye of Ra Nebula, Morning Breaks Anew, and Barbell Nebula.
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Eye of Ra Nebula, Derrick Helphenstine, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36 in. / 60.96 x 91.44 cm.
Eye of Ra Nebula commands attention with its swirling halo of ochre, blue, and black, conjuring the mythical as much as the astronomical. The central shape glows with dense energy, a cosmic iris gazing from the abyss. Named after the Egyptian sun god’s all-seeing eye, this piece connects ancient mythologies to celestial structure. The technique is fluid and atmospheric, with tendrils of gas-like paint curling across a galactic void. Helphenstine blends scientific reference with metaphysical imagination, suggesting that space is not just outer, but deeply inward.
Morning Breaks Anew, Derrick Helphenstine, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 in. / 30.48 x 30.48 cm.
With Morning Breaks Anew, Helphenstine shifts from the mythic to the intimate. This smaller canvas glows in soft reds, violets, and cool greys, like the pre-dawn stirrings of a newborn star. While abstract in form, the composition captures the feeling of emergence and gentle awakening. There’s a tenderness to the transitions of light and shadow, evoking the emotional resonance of daybreak. The cloud-like formations float delicately, reminding us that cosmic processes mirror our own cycles of rest, rebirth, and renewal.
Barbell Nebula, Derrick Helphenstine, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 in. / 30.48 x 30.48 cm.
In Barbell Nebula, bursts of emerald green and crimson red contrast sharply against the indigo-black background, evoking explosive galactic energy. The title implies a balanced duality, two masses suspended by an invisible force. This piece feels kinetic, charged with motion and friction. Splattered paint and layered transparencies suggest expansion and collapse, a choreography of creation. The abstracted nebula becomes a metaphor for equilibrium and tension, two forces constantly reshaping the universe and ourselves.
Derrick Helphenstine’s nebula series paints the cosmos not as cold, empty space, but as a living system pulsing with beauty, myth, and motion. Each canvas becomes a microcosm of creation, where pigment becomes plasma, and brushwork becomes starlight. These works ask us to look not just out, but within, to see the same energy in galaxies that we hold in our breath, our blood, our dreams.
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Storm Clearing, Derrick Helphenstine, 2024, acrylic on canvas board, 10 x 8 in. / 25.4 x 20.32 cm.
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