White: The Genuine Space of Beginnings
Helene Lundbye Petersen on Presence, the Unknown, and the Courage Not to Know
An interview by Maria Belton
For Danish artist and philosopher Helene Lundbye Petersen, White is the genuine space of beginnings, infinite potential, and the unknown.
Through /WhitePageProject, she has built an entire artistic universe centered on presence, connection, and colour. At its core lies a call to return to what she names the Genuine: the raw, unfiltered resonance between self, other, and existence. Through her Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being, she introduces a new language for human experience, in which each colour space represents a universal aspect of being that we all navigate in our own way.
White is central to your work. Can you explain why White is connected to beginnings and the unknown?
The Blank White Page was—literally, symbolically, and physically—the beginning of my work. It is like fog, or newly fallen snow. It holds everything that could emerge, but also everything we do not yet know.
To this day, White remains a space of potential as well as uncertainty. It can be fragile to enter, because we step out of norms and habits and into a place without answers. White calls us into to the beginning to not repeat what we already know, but to genuinely figure something out. To step into the fog, to brave the unknown, and allow something new to arise.
Your three White paintings also marked the beginning of a new series. Can you tell us about that transition?
Yes, they were very much a beginning. I was preparing works for an upcoming show in Los Angeles and felt a strong need to translate the space of the book into painting.
I chose to work with oil paint because of its weight, its history, and its classical lineage. Pigment blended with linseed oil carries a depth of time that felt essential to this work. I worked on large canvases—large enough to function as spatial experiences rather than images.
For the three White paintings, I selected three drawings from The White Book: a circle, a horizontal line, and two vertical lines. I also chose a few quotes from the book and hand-wrote them directly onto the canvas before painting over them. The words are there. They are present, but hidden. That concealed presence became foundational to all the paintings, and it began with White.
What did working with White oil paint reveal to you about the White Space itself?
The white pigment I chose was very heavy, and working with it drew me into a vivid, physical form of expression.
Initially, I imagined the paintings as perfectly graphic, almost controlled. But once I began painting, the brushstrokes became visible and the work turned deeply personal. White did not allow me to hide. It invited rawness, presence, and genuine expression.
I realized that I had been striving for neutral perfection, but the oil paint pulled out a more vivid expressionism. When I finished the paintings, I understood that I had found a visual language—one that mirrored the way I had written The White Book.
Every time I return to White, it reminds me of what I genuinely want to say. It brings me back to the beginning, again and again, asking me to speak from that place, and here, through painting.
How do the paintings connect to your books and the philosophy behind your work?
Colour, for me, is a foundational space of being. That understanding began with the calligraphic manuscript White. After writing the books, the work demanded more than words—it evolved into a need to be performed, spoken, painted, embodied, and shared.
Where the book outlines the space through words, the paintings articulate it through pigment and brushstroke, and the performances through gesture. Even in these extremely minimal White paintings, there is immense expression. In the circle, for example, the brushstrokes radiate outward, following the geometry of the form.
I painted with both white and black oil paint, and there was a constant tension—a struggle—between the two, as if they wanted to merge. That dynamic reflects something essential in the philosophy itself.
You are now releasing these three White paintings as art prints. How has this process shifted your understanding of White?
Interestingly, the prints brought me back to the original graphic vision I had at the very beginning.
Through the printing process, I had to decide how much detail to preserve. The result became a balance between a cleaner, more graphic surface and the tactile presence of light, shadow, and painted tactile details.
The prints distilled the paintings and allowed them to become their own expression. They offer the White Space as something shareable and flexible. They become adaptable to different contexts and lives.
This process led me back to the White Space, where form, meaning, and intention come into being. White is not passive; it actively shapes how meaning emerges.
White can feel both inviting and unsettling. How do people typically respond when they encounter this space in your work?
White brings slowness and silence. Some feel relief; others feel discomfort. That reaction is essential—it reveals how unfamiliar we have become with not knowing. White exposes our relationship with uncertainty, and that is often where something genuine can begin.
How does White function within the broader Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being?
White is not outside the spectrum. It is the space that allows the spectrum to emerge. It holds all colours without defining them.
It is the beginning, but also the space we must return to if we want to remain genuine rather than habitual. I believe this makes White a necessary readjustment in our existence. It can be forced, or it can be chosen. I hope my work inspires us to integrate it consciously into our systems and our way of being.
Your work moves fluidly between philosophy and art. Do you see these as separate disciplines?
Not at all. For me, philosophy is lived, embodied, and expressed. Art is not illustrating philosophy; it is thinking in another language. The separation is artificial, and genuine understanding needs both.
Why is White particularly relevant now?
Because we are overwhelmed, overstimulated, and perhaps even confused. With such powerful forces at play and instant global communication, it is difficult to know where to look to find solutions, grounding and connection.
White offers a pause. A space without instruction. It restores our capacity to sense, to feel, and to listen inwardly.
What do you hope people take with them after encountering your White works?
I hope they leave with a subtle hope, a quieter mind, a deeper presence, and permission not to know. That is often where the most meaningful beginnings arise.
I hope the works serve as a gentle reminder to return to this White Space whenever it is needed, to pause, to breathe, to feel, and to reconnect with genuine understanding.
Across your three white paintings and now prints, you return to a very distilled, essential and raw composition in the form of a circle, two vertical lines and a horizontal line, that feels open rather than descriptive. How do you yourself understand these minimalistic drawings within your work?
For me, these minimalistic drawings are not intended as symbols with a defined meaning, but rather as a kind of structural presence within the White Space. The circle, the vertical lines and the horizontal line are very simple forms, yet they carry a certain tension and balance between stillness and movement.
In reducing the imagery to such basic elements, I am trying to strip away anything that might close the work down or dictate a narrative. Instead, the drawings create a space where the viewer can pause, reflect, and perhaps sense something rather than be told what to think. In that way, they are less about representation and more about creating a condition — a moment of presence where meaning can quietly emerge.
That being said, I do have my own understanding, and association. I like to see the three of them together as a kind of portrait of the experience of being in the White Space. You begin with the circle, as that initial sensation when something new calls you in, something that carries the potential for. Then you enter and navigate a kind of the fog of the unknown, encountering obstacles and limitations that form borders that prevent you from moving further until you recognise what is blocking you, whether externally, or within your own body mind and emotions. The third relates to movement and clarity, the understanding you then gain after finding your way through. With that comes a sense of freedom and perhaps even a certain efficiency that can arise when you step into the new, release what no longer serves you, and allow yourself or the situation to grow.
At the same time, these forms also carry a much broader, open resonance beyond my personal reading. Some may see them as erotic, others as purely geometric or simple elemental. But they are also foundational. In different desert regions of the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, archaeologists have found prehistoric stone circles and linear formations dating back to the Neolithic period, often buried beneath the sand. Some researchers have interpreted these as having ritual or symbolic associations, connected to ideas of life, fertility, community, or territorial presence. What seems clear is that such elemental shapes have repeatedly appeared across cultures and eras, pointing to a deep, intuitive human impulse to give form to our experience of the world through the most basic and enduring geometries, and that I find profoundly inspiring.
