Helene Lundbye Petersen on Seizing the Moment through the Senses
by Maria Belton
General Introduction
In a world saturated with images, information and noise, Danish artist and philosopher Helene Lundbye Petersen has built an entire artistic universe around connection, presence, and colour. Her life’s work, /WhitePageProject, began with a single gesture — the offering of a blank white page — and has since evolved into a living, breathing artwork that weaves together philosophy, performance, writing, and painting.
At its core lies a call to return to what she names the Genuine: the raw, unfiltered resonance between self, other, and existence itself. Through her Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being, each hue becomes a space of emotion and insight — an experience to enter rather than a concept to grasp.
The Orange Space
Each Colour Space in the Spectrum holds its own state of being. After White and Blue, the next Colour Space to emerge was the Orange. Can you describe what this Space is about?
Orange is the Space of Pleasure. It is being present in the moment, living through our senses and allowing them to ground us in the tactile, material experience of being — before the mind begins to describe, analyse and assess the moment. Here, pleasure becomes the key to presence. Not pleasure as overstimulation or hedonism, but genuine pleasure of being physical, embodied and alive. The joy found in each moment when we embrace it as it is through touch, sight, scent, taste and sound.
The understanding of the Orange Space derives from The Orange Book - Ode to Pleasure, where it is embodied by A Goddess of Pleasure. She represents the accumulated body, the intelligence of sensation and lived experience, and appears when we are fully connected to the present moment through our senses.
Children often inhabit this present state naturally. They do not worry about time, nor do they analyse their experience. They are immersed in where they are. In the Orange Space, we allow the senses to ground us in the now, regardless of what we are living through - even in times of difficulty. Orange reminds us that presence is always available, and that pleasure, in the most genuine form, can anchor us there.
How did you experience Orange in the Studio, when you began painting it?
Orange arrived with such a burst of energy. I was still deep in Blue at the time—immersed in wisdom, reflection, and accumulation. At a certain point I had to say: enough. I need to let go, and move on. Sometimes wisdom is knowing when not to think.
How did that translate into the physical act of painting?
I returned to my pigment collaborators, who prepared a cadmium orange for me. When I painted the first layer in his studio, it was perfect. It was just so bright, so powerful, and so present. One layer was enough. It was just there. Boom. And that is really what the Orange Space is.
It's actually so simple, yet somehow difficult. Allowing ourselves to genuinely feel pleasure fully. It requires opening our eyes to the colours, shapes and the forms; feeling the wind on our skin; tasting our food; listening to the sounds around us. These subtle sensations, when allowed in as the primary experience of being, create immediate pleasure. The paintings hold that state.
I did add a few more layers, partly because I just loved painting them, and partly because of the forms that emerged. But the warmth, the clarity, the joy remained.
Orange can also be associated with urgency or warning. How does that relate here?
Yes, orange is often used to grab attention, like traffic cones, signals or alerts. But here, the urgency is different. It’s not alarmist. It’s an invitation. A call to remind us of living.
I’m struck by how each painting seems to mirror the state it represents — not conceptually, but as something you actually live through in the making. White as beginning and openness, learning the material and the fresh start; Blue as wisdom beneath the layers and accumulation; and Orange, where you’ve described painting it as pure joy and pleasure. Each colour seems to reflect not just meaning, but what you were experiencing at that moment. Is that how you see the relationship between the Colour Spaces and your process?
Yes. Referring back to the mosaic image from our first interview, each painting carries a piece of that particular Colour Space. For me, creation and understanding merge completely. Each painting is not just about a space — it is that space, translated into pigment.
The Colour Spaces are lived states of being. They are not symbols, but experiences. What emerges on the canvas is the experience of these existential spaces, embodied through pigment.
Can you tell us about the two Orange paintings — what do they depict?
The first orange painting holds a small circle, and that to me is like the moment itself. It is right there. The now. Suspended in a field of orange.
The second painting holds a large drop. For me, it speaks to the pain of letting go of a moment filled with pleasure, which reminds us that if we cling to a moment, we leave the present.
Orange teaches us to feel fully and find the joy or pleasure in the moment and to release it, and let it go.
You have spoken of orange having the power to shift emotional states. Do you experience that yourself ?
Very directly. Once, I was in the studio, mourning over something that had happened. Orange was hanging beside me. I was still crying — but the feeling shifted. My tears became joyful.
There’s a small nightclub nearby with a sign that says: Don’t cry because it’s over. Cry because it happened. That was the shift I felt.
That is the power of Orange. Even pain, when fully experienced through the senses, can reconnect us to life, to presence, and to the pleasure of being alive. Orange reminds us that this state is always available, when we need to return to vitality and the joy being fully present through our senses.
To read more about the Orange Space, dive into her exhibition here: The Orange Space
Find the Orange Print that calls to you:
