Explore the foundation of the Genuine Being with Helene Lundbye Petersen.
Interview by Maria Belton
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. Since then, it has evolved into a living artwork that weaves together philosophy, performance, writing, and painting. At its core lies a call to return to what she names the Genuine: a raw, unfiltered resonance between self, other, and existence. 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.
I sat down with Helene to speak about the beginnings of /WhitePageProject, her understanding of the language of colour, and what she hopes others will encounter when engaging with her work.
Your work often touches on big existential ideas. Where did that interest come from? Was there a moment or influence that set you down this path?
My experience with the work is that it comes from within. When I first started to create, I had no idea that it would end up being so comprehensive. It wasn’t an intellectual decision or theory, but rather a emergence of something profound.
So it kind of came upon you?
Precisely, there is an element of unveiling, or revealing to my work. I follow the continuous call to create. When I began to write, I began with white, and that led to blue, and that led to orange, and I basically just found the colours and the works along the way. Then afterwards, when I saw these 13 books of 12 colours together, I found the Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being, I started seeing it everywhere; reflected in how people dressed, to ancient colour systems, or the colour of the rainbow, and I felt that there was something foundational at play. It's almost as if I'm creating a larger map, a portrait of being human, where each piece is then a part of it.
I do feel a very natural call to talk about life. It’s just a natural magnetic force both within me and through the work itself. When there are so many crises, so much information, so many problems that need to be solved, it's so easy to forget how wonderful life actually is, and how many wonders there are. I really want to honour that, and bring out all of these beautiful facets of existence through this prism or kaleidoscope of Colour Spaces. Each new work, book, or encounter brings another aspect of this. That for me is the most meaningful part of my work.
When meeting your work, you start making it relate to your own self. It’s very exciting to come into your universe of wonderful Colour Spaces. How did it all begin ?
That would be on a blank white page, in a white note book from Japan. The Blank White Page that I felt on all levels of my life, became the physical, symbolic, artistic and emotional beginning of my work, from where all the other colours came. It is also the title of my total artwork: /WhitePageProject, that holds and names my ongoing creation as a whole. I still go to the blank white page, every time I create something new, and it is what I wish to offer us all. It sort of like a breath or beginning, the potential of whatever could come from this, so that is always the starting point, where everything comes from.
You move so freely between writing, performance, and working with materials. How do these different forms connect for you? Do they feel equal, or does one tend to lead the way?
They are equals. They're all a part of this big mosaic, where each artwork contributes to a larger foundation. Whether it’s paintings or prints, performances, installations or books, they are equal in this mosaic. They intervene, overlap and come together to form one whole that keeps evolving and expanding.
Chronology matters too. My calligraphic manuscripts came first, the coloured notebooks that I would fill with writing by hand. To me, they are more spaces than notebooks. Each space is dedicated to an existential aspect of life. As I wrote these calligraphic manuscripts I began to understand, referring back to your first question, that sort of existential depth that comes with addressing life through these colours. As I transcribed these into printed books, then performances and the paintings, each new medium revealed a new facet of the work, making it accessible in a new way.
Even though I don’t think this mosaic will ever be finished, it has reached a point where there are so many pieces that you can begin to see the pattern they create. It forms the foundation of what it is, which in essence, is an understanding of being human, where Colour Spaces becomes a language to explain feelings or states of being that are otherwise hard to articulate.
Yes, I can see these Colour Spaces make it easier. Just trying to find Yellow, the balance in the every day life between work, family, and one self, all of it. It feels grounding to return to something as basic as colour to explain our being and feelings, because it can be so difficult to put emotions into words. With colour, people can relate intuitively.
Exactly. It is this intuitive connection to Colour, that makes me see them as a language of being. Each Colour holds a Space that is ready to hold you, to mirror you. And just what you exactly described in regards to Yellow, is the situation we all know, the need to find balance, but the Yellow Space creates a ground, where we can all meet, where we can all feel and connect to the state of being in or out of balance. It allows us to feel, communicate and share the state of being without needing specific details and explanations and defining words. We could also just say, I need yellow, and we would all know what we were talking about. So I think that also brings me back to that this is a mosaic of life, a foundation for shared human experience. It provides a way to talk about life and recognise what we all have in common, where we can come home to that foundational existential feelings or states of being.
This mosaic of /WhitePageProject is just a wonderful way to make us see the different parts of life that we all share. You often write texts that live alongside your artworks, or even become the artwork itself. How do words and visuals relate?
Words are important. They are a wonderful tool, but words also have the danger of becoming defining and very harsh even. They just can’t contain all that life is. My books are poetically written, and I’m trying to push as much space into the written word as possible but I also felt the urge to speak in non-verbal ways, through visuals, presence, pigments, texture, light, or the movement of the body. By doing so, these Colour Spaces are not defined by words alone, but communicates artistically, pragmatic, intellectually, sensually and so on.
So it's a way of understanding life in multiple languages
Yes. My artistic calling is to uncover a sort of foundational way of understanding our being, life, existence, the earth, even the universe. I am portraying this felt resonance or connection, not in a defined, concrete way but a continuous attempt to approach the ungraspable with every possible medium that there is, colours, words, form, pigment, textile, choreography, gestures, ancient monuments, skyscrapers. Each creation brings me closer to find a language that is open and vast, yet simple enough to express this resonance that lies within, beneath and beyond us all.
Do you think of art as communication, or as a space where meaning stays open, maybe even a bit mysterious?
Both. Art communicates what words cannot. It can express and say something directly that our verbal words and definitions are not able to say with the same existential precision, and at the same time, it must always stay open. This makes art both mysterious and precise.
I have always loved art. I've always felt drawn to it. All my life has been dedicated to art and working with art from different angles. Even as a small child, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I took a very different route to find my artistic expression. Nonetheless, I ended up here. Art soothes cultural miscommunication, and creates profound existential connection, which is one of its qualities that I also place in focus in my own work, creating an existential space where we can feel life.
You can never own the definition of art and that is what makes it a space. Art must stay open as well to new interpretations and meanings, and to me, that is the greatest gift that art has to give. Whether you stand in front of a primordial handprint in a cave in France, connecting with the person who placed their hand in pigment and placed it on the wall in front of you, or you walk through Musée d'Orsay and notice the hand gestures in an impressionist painting—in that moment of connection, your time and the time of the artwork meet. In your interpretation of what you see and feel, why hands suddenly are so interesting to you, why something resonates, makes your life and art melt together. The connection through meaning and being is what creates existential understanding of why it speaks to you. And within that moment, you might find a very, deep existential understanding of yourself. Yet another person, standing in the same place, may see something completely different. And I think within that is the most perfect space for grasping being human. Not as a definition, but as a resonance and connection.
You've shown your work in so many different contexts, from major museums to more remote or unusual spaces. How does the place or setting influence what you create?
Locations mirror and unfold the Colour Spaces, whether it is through actual physical paint on a wall in a room, their use, function, or atmosphere. Sometimes I use performances to show this connection to physical spaces. For example, in the Danish Parliament, the Red Hall perfectly reflected the themes of The Red Book of battle, ambition and will. In Greece the Colours interacted with ancient spaces not through pigment, but through the choreography and the colour of the costume I would wear to bring out the Colour Space in the stones, sands, rock, of old temples and caves.
You’ve collaborated with people from all kinds of fields —musicians, chefs, ballet dancers, politicians, scientists, philosophers. What draws you to a collaboration?
Resonance, I think. It feels very much the same thing that has me create art. It's the same energy. And if a collaboration is right, there is an understanding, and mutual inspiration. It's very much like music, where each bring a unique component. I'm very inspired by expertise; by people who dedicate their life to something and really understand it in a profound way. I get inspired by their enthusiasm, their love and dedication and profound knowledge in their field. And again, it's adding into this mosaic, where I just want to continue applying the Colour spectrum of Genuine Being to everything from biology, and medical science, politics, food, scent, and life itself.
When people encounter your work, are they witnesses, participants, or something else entirely?
I think this work is a part of each of us. It transcends the possibility that it's even a witness or a participant. It is something that belongs to us all. When you create something, there is a an extreme amount of loneliness, and you can have your own feelings very much tied up to the work. And as you create, you have to. You have to leave the world, build your own little tower and isolate yourself to withdraw from the world to create this thing that needs to come out.
When I started to create I was in New York, and I was grasping for words. I knew that it was something completely different than I had ever known. I could feel it with the resonance, but I couldn't feel it with my intellectual words. Then, I was meeting an artist that a friend had set up, and it was very early morning, and I was extremely hungover. We were the only ones in this cafe that she had found, and she then she asked me but what is it you want to create? and from this profound depth of my body, I just said, love! in the loudest clearest voice, and she immediately reacted, okay, I'm in! Afterwards, I was surprised by this choice of word, but lately I have come to think that it is actually love that I have created. And I would wish that anyone encountering my work, would feel this love, if not from me, from the work at least. Not as a concept, but as a lived resonance that is both personal and collective, calling us to a shared foundation of experience.
You can just tell how connected you are to everything, through /WhitePageProject, but also giving people connection to themselves, and that is love. Do you think art can connect us to something timeless — or is it actually its fleeting, fragile nature that gives it power?
My creation has a timeless nature. It honours the ability that art has to connect us even across centuries. Its universality persists, though its experience is fleeting. Of course art history, and the contemporary scene convey the many styles and fashions in the art, but even though a work of art can be rooted in a specific personal style and time, I like to think that art itself has a timeless nature and can always be opened or seen in a new way because the connection can be established anew. So art is both timeless and also fleeting; it has a universal space that it just holds, but you can't grasp it, you can't define it too much. We can easily over-conceptualise or over-analyse artworks but it will be at the risk of loosing what makes art so needed and unique.
Has there been a moment or project that really shifted how you see your own work?
Yes, there have been many. I would actually say the biggest shift is happening right now. Going back to the metaphor of the mosaic and understanding the big picture. After taking five years of stepping back from creation to truly understand what it is I'm building, it’s coming together as a whole, and is about to be released as such. That marks a major shift in both the way I see the work, and my role as an artist.
But in the beginning, those shifts could also come as an inner dialogue. During my first performance, I was incredibly nervous. At that time, even saying my name in a room with more than five people would make my hands sweat. And suddenly I found myself standing in front of a small crowd of people with that same shaky feeling. I remember having this internal conversation: listen, this is just the beginning. You are on this path now. If you are going to do this, you have to become comfortable enough to even enjoy it. Otherwise it will be too hard, and then this is just not for you.
I remember, standing there, inside that white circle in a gallery on Boulevard Rothschild in Tel Aviv, and making that choice. I will do this. And from that moment on, I have never been nervous again.
It's interesting to hear you say that because when I see the photographs of you performing in front of I don't know how many people, I did not think that.
Yes, I think it’s an important reminder that we all need to ask ourselves whether something feels uncomfortable simply because it's new, or because we’re genuinely not meant to be in that situation. That moment made it very clear to me that I had chosen this path, and that discomfort was simply a part of growing. I had to draw from another energy than nervousness. Stepping out of the comfort zone was necessary, because on the other side of that discomfort there was something that felt natural.
These shifts can also come from People. For instance, when I had my performance series in Greece, my performances up until then had been quite intellectual and word-based. My husband, who photographed the performances, is a ballet dancer from the Royal Danish Ballet. He pulled me out of my intellectual approach and inspired me towards wordless expression through intuitively felt choreography, which opened an entirely new way of performing to me.
How do you think about the role of art and beauty today, especially in a time when we’re constantly bombarded with images and information?
Beauty, just as love, has been misused, and abused as a word. Beauty can be drawn back to something that has to do with very harmonious, a transcendental aspect of connecting to life, the balance, the love. This is where my key word from this overall understanding of my work has come into play, to actually be able to answer such a question as this. Because I have found the word the Genuine through my work, that I understand as the most profound resonance that allows you to connect with life, to the people that you are with, or the thing that you do or want to do or whatever it is. It's sort of within us and between us and beyond us. I think, art and beauty, if presented but also accepted or embraced in a genuine way, can absolutely bring us the nourishment that we need right now, on a personal level, on a societal level, reminding us of the things that we have forgotten, and inspire us and make us be who we genuinely are. I believe art and beauty have played a tremendous role, but both suffer under a high level of paste, vast information, and this AI-generated world where we're bombarded with it. That is just a sugar bomb, but not profound. Where both art and beauty suddenly become something that is distorted or pulls us out of harmony not towards it. And to me, genuine beauty, genuine art is profound, just as genuinely being yourself is profound.
Now that we’ve talked about your work in a broader sense, I’d like to focus on your paintings. Your practice spans so many artistic mediums so what was it about oil painting that drew you to this series?
In 2015, I was in New York for the Performa Biennial, and I received gallery offers. One of them was this gallery in Los Angeles, where I was invited to do a solo-show. My art at that time had been so performance-installation and book-based, but when I came back to my studio in Copenhagen, I wanted to paint. I chose to work with oil because of its significant history as artist medium. This whole series is based on getting to understand the pigment, going into nature of oil paint as they breathe, and change and evolve. They are organic; they have a nature of living, almost, responding, reacting, evolving.
For some of the paintings, I collaborated with this old art store that hand-mixed the pigments with linseed oil for me, and worked together in finding the right shade, learning the nature of the pigments, and then, unfortunately midway through the series, the shop had to close after 120 years. I needed to find other ways of working with the oil paintings. The sizes of the canvases follow the proportions of the original calligraphic manuscripts. I would handwrite quotes from the book on the canvas, and cover them with paint, to subtly underline the connection between book and painting conveying these Colour Spaces.
With 24 paintings forming a single series, how do the individual works relate to each other?
Today, I really see them as one artwork, but they were not created as a whole. Each painting has its individuality, yet together they form a living spectrum. The works can stand on their own and allow you to be drawn to the ones that you need, that mirror you, where you are, that tell you where you definitely shouldn't go. The three white paintings convey The White Book and the Space of Beginnings, Infinite potential and the Unknown. The two Blue paintings convey The Blue Book and the Space of Wisdom, our Mind and Thoughts. The two orange paintings convey The Orange Book and the Space of pleasure, the Moment and our Senses. The two red paintings convey The Red Book and the Space of Battle, Force and the Will. The two green paintings convey The Green Book and the Space of Love, Connection and Feelings. The two yellow paintings convey The Yellow Book and the Space of Balance Resonance and Harmony. The one large purple painting convey The Purple Book and the Space of Language Understanding and Communication. The two beige paintings convey The Beige Book and the Space of Time and Space, Being and Existence. The two brown paintings convey The Brown Book and Space of Nourishment, Transformation and Becoming. The two pink paintings convey The Pink Book and the Space of Skin, and Personal Being. The four black paintings convey The Black Book and the Space of Death, Endings and Letting Go.
And then there are two grey calligraphic manuscripts on individual and collective systems. Grey will follow in paintings when they have been published.
That’s also how I see your visual spectrum. Where there is a connection to that specific artwork to me right now.
Precisely, yes. That also makes me think about my work like a language or an alphabet, just as profoundly fundamental than pigment, breath, the earth, water.
How are the paintings connected to your greater work ?
When I started painting, it was as if the books became the spaces that I felt that they really were. Through them, a door opened to a part of the mosaic that really was important. I can see that the way people react to the paintings are immediate versus with the books, that are more like a journey or relationship. It takes time. You get the book and of course connect to the colour, but you need to still take your time to journey with it and within yourself. The paintings convey the books as these huge visual spaces, that say the same thing, but speak differently. Its the intellectual side of understanding versus that instant visual that immediately makes you feel something very powerful and very precise.
The paintings are now being reproduced as prints. How does this affect experience?
The paintings are alive. They are the physical pigment, and you can really see the brush strokes, shades, and all the details. The prints are alive in a different way. Just like the handwritten book had become a printed book, which became a painting, and now the painting becomes a print and artworks in their own right. While they can’t replicate the original’s texture or light, they still translate the essence. So, where the painting would change in colour, light, and shape, the print can't do that, but I can interpret the painting's essence, or what we want to call it, into the prints. The prints also have the same size, to make the visual spectrum present, bringing a new quality to the Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being. At the same time, they allow for a new way of engaging with the art through reproduction. This allows my dream of creating worldwide accessibility with this work, to become reality.
How do you hope this wider accessibility will change the way people interact with the Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being?
I hope these prints become spaces of consciousness, in private life and in our shared, public environments: organisations, classrooms, studios, offices. The way we work, study, and teach could all be supported by this visual language. Prints democratise this experience, allowing anyone to become collectors of them. They can become a part of daily life, a conscious reminder of ones’s state or needs.
I'm very fascinated by places, how our environments shape us. It’s interesting to imagine workspaces where, for example, the cantina reflects pleasure or balance, reminding people to connect with themselves, the moment and their senses. Or in a school, where a classroom might be Blue, because it’s a space for diving into knowledge. But what if you had both Blue and Orange? Would it shift our consciousness, reminding the children and teachers to stay grounded in the body while taking in information?
It opens dialogue about the spaces we already inhabit. In the Danish Parliament, where the Colours were already present. What would happen if the Prints underlined and activated those spaces? I’ve also worked with companies using small colour cards to help identify roles within a team. People would say, “You’re so Purple today,” or “You’re very Orange.” What if these prints could similarly underline the roles people take on, or the changes needed within a workspace?
I can also picture if you had the prints in your home, it becomes a personal reminder or connection.
In our homes, they can be curated according to the spaces that we are in internally, within the family or relationship dynamic. The combination that you choose mirrors where you are, and that can change next week, next day, next month, next year. That makes it a living artwork. Not just something that speaks to you, but something that is you. Bringing the art and philosophy into homes worldwide makes it both a conversational piece and a way of expressing how you feel — a way of speaking the language of being.
Because I actually think that you are the artwork. Your choice portrays and mirrors you. It gives you a conscious way to acknowledge where you genuinely are, what you need, or where you want to go. Your might choose a Colour and look at it every day until you can connect with that part of yourself.
Say that you are in White. You choose which white painting or print represent the White you're in. Is it like the circle or the lines? Is this a space you need to transcend, so to speak, or is there movement? And then one day you feel that your white space has closed, and you have moved into Red. And then you might hang only the Red prints.
How do you hope this wider accessibility will change the way people interact with the Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being?
I hope the Colour Spaces become a language that helps people connect with their genuine selves. A way to understand not only their inner state, but also how they relate to their surroundings and environments. To be able to communicate where they are, without having to share the details and explain everything. For example, imagine needing to go to the bank to negotiate a loan. What if you could simply bring the Black Space with you, show it to your advisor and say, just to let you know it's where I am. Not to justify it, just acknowledge it, and maybe that would produce kindness or empathy that you need, when you are in the Black Space. Or when you are in love, and completely in the Green, Orange and Pink Space, and you just have these endorphins pulsing through your body, applying for that same loan. All of it is being human. And I hope the Colour Spaces give people a way to express that honestly. I hope that they will convey the meaning of the books, and the paintings. I really hope that they will become this connection to who we genuinely are.
How do you see this series speaking to people today — in a world that is often fast-paced, noisy, or disconnected?
Ever since I began on this journey, I had this vision of holding space for us. Creating a genuine space where we cannot overhear life. I recently understood that that vision is within reach, as my entire work, the art, the books, the presence, the conversations, the performances, and now also the prints, all come together as way of connecting with the world through a natural harmony.
It's so overwhelming right now. Of course the world has always been overwhelming, but with technology, the overwhelm has become so much more extended. I really think that there is a part of us that is stuck, evolutionarily stuck, in how we've been humans for a very long time, and now we are accelerating at a speed that is just inhumane; it is literally inhumane. Not to say that it's not full of wonders, it is. I do believe too that the future is almost here now, but it also underlines the need, the acute need for space that we just don't have. I hope that this work, in whatever form you connect to it, could be that space. A place to just breathe and connect with life, and be nourished so we can stand our ground a little more balanced and harmonious, dealing with the pressure of our current society and condition and problems that need solving as soon as possible.
Looking back at your work as a whole, and now at this series of paintings and prints, what do you hope people take away from encountering your art?
Hope, I think. At least that's what I found myself. I have come to see that the experience I had with first creating it, of course, being a little frightened, a little overwhelmed, then starting to trust the unfolding and now unfolding it. I start seeing the work as very cyclical, a continuous cycle through all the colours. We start with white; there's always something new, and then suddenly the work starts to reveal its vastness through each colour. They are this foundation; all we need to do is trust ourselves, and trust that the work will hold space for you, so you can thread the ground.
If the first word I came up with to describe my work was love, then my word now would be hope. Hope that there is love, and trust that there is something, a resonance, that holds us. One that does not come from a place of power or authority, but it comes from a place that has always been there, just life.
/WhitePageProject continues to unfold, offering a profound exploration of human experience through colour, presence, and the search for the Genuine. Helene Lundbye Petersen’s work reminds us that art is not just to be seen, but to be lived, shared, and felt — a bridge between self, other, and the world around us.
Photo by Paul Khera
