Helene Lundbye Petersen on the Equilibrium of Being
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 — 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 Yellow Space
Each Colour Space holds its own state of being. After White, Blue, Orange, Red, and Green comes Yellow — the lovely Yellow. Can you describe what this Space is about?
Yellow is the space of Balance, Resonance, and Harmony. It holds the almost alchemistic moment of equilibrium that cannot be obtained by force or measured through calculation, but only by the lived sense of flow. Yellow holds and captures what cannot be held, and captured, because it will change as we change. So the Yellow Space invites us to release rigid understandings of who we are — our thoughts, sensations, desires, feelings — and allow them to unite within who we genuinely are.
The deeper understanding of Yellow unfolds in The Yellow Book – Ode to Balance (2017), the final book in the goddess series, alongside The Blue Book – Ode to Wisdom, The Orange Book – Ode to Pleasure, The Red Book – Ode to Battle, and The Green Book – Ode to Love. Together they represent five foundational elements of being human.
In The Yellow Book, the Goddess of Balance carries the immense task of harmonising body, mind, will, and feeling. She sits on her throne within a universe of scales — shifting, compensating, constantly adjusting. Every imbalance requires another correction, and her realm becomes restless and tense. When I wrote her, I remember thinking: this is us, right now. It is the stress of trying to bring something insurmountable into balance, the toxic tension we feel in our bodies when we believe balance must be achieved through control.
One day, she falls. And because her universe is made of golden metal scales, they mirror her back to herself, and she realises she is not a measuring system - she is human. Scales measure amounts; they are static even when they move. But balance cannot be measured in amount. It can only be lived and felt genuinely.
She understands that she created the scales because the mind prefers definition. The mind likes statistics, systems, conclusions. Our political and economic worlds operate like this and success is measured through data, through visible outcomes, through what can be counted. But genuine balance cannot be reduced to numbers.
So she melts the scales into a vast golden mirror and begins again. She learns of balance not through measurement, but through connection with her own genuine being. And from there, she calls in the other goddesses and bring them together as a whole — not balanced through systems, but harmonised through presence.
How did you experience Yellow when you began painting it?
Yellow was difficult to find. The pigments were mixed three times before the tone felt right. It was too cold, too warm, and always just slightly off. Like, it just says how difficult it is to find that perfect balance. Eventually I realised the colour was teaching me something. Balance shifts with light, mood, and perspective. Perhaps what I was searching for was not a perfect tone, but a moment of decision.
When I allowed the third mixture to be balance, it became balance. And that shift in perception was itself an experience of equilibrium.
What is the emotional or energetic quality of Yellow that makes it unique?
It is the constant movement.
Yellow changes. It can appear radiant like sunlight and gold, joyful and expansive, and in another moment be utterly and uncertain. Perhaps that is why yellow has carried such varied symbolism across cultures. Across cultures it has symbolised power and divinity, but also jealousy, deceitfulness or instability.
Its shifting quality is precisely its innate quality.
To me, that is not deception — it is aliveness. Yellow is dynamic and relational. It reflects us back to ourselves. What brings equilibrium in one moment may not in the next, because we are no longer the same. Balance moves because we move. It requires listening.
How did that translate into the paintings’ imagery?
Like Green, the Yellow paintings form a connected composition across two canvases. The imagery is drawn from The Yellow Book – Ode to Balance, where it describes the tension between the graspable and the ungraspable world.
The imagery depicts a scale, but the scales resemble eyes.
One eye holds a black centre, seeing the material world; the other a white centre, seeing the immaterial. Together they suggest that genuine balance is found in the meeting between what we can measure and what we cannot — between the visible and the invisible.
The canvases shift with the viewer’s gaze, inviting reflection and attunement. Balance reveals itself as relational: between mind and body, thought and feeling, self and other. The paintings are alive, reminding us to notice that equilibrium is not fixed but felt. What feels harmonious now may shift in the next moment.
Just as the Goddess must let her universe of scales collapse before melting it into a mirror, we too must move beyond rigid systems and return to presence. Balance is not something we achieve once and for all, but something we return to within ourselves — again and again.
Portraying Balance, Performance, at The Danish Parliament Christiansborg, Copenhagen. Photo by Morten Eggert
Is this only about personal balance?
No, but it begins there.
Harmony in the world starts with each of us finding our own genuine connection to being. When we see ourselves clearly, holding both the graspable and the ungraspable within us, we may find balance in that moment, even knowing it will shift.
Wow, that’s beautiful. I love hearing you describe it, because it feels like an invitation to rethink what balance really is. We often approach it as something we should organise — work, family, responsibilities — but that can become another form of pressure. What you describe feels different, as if the power to balance is already within us, and the stress begins when the mind tries to define it too rigidly.
Yes, exactly. And that connects back to Blue.
In The Blue Book, the lines are arrows, and the square represents understanding. It is the only square in all the books. Unlike the circle, it is constructed — precise, controlled, mathematical. It symbolises how we organise knowledge: we define, categorise, contain. It is powerful, but it is not wisdom. Because in defining something, we limit it. We forget the whole.
Towards the end in The Blue Book, A Goddess of Wisdom realises she does not have all the answers. So she begins to ask questions. Those questions become arrows that reach the other goddesses — until they strike the Goddess of Balance, and she falls.
And that fall leads to this genuine understanding of Yellow.
Because balance is never fixed. It moves because we move. What is aligned in one moment is not in the next. That is why finding the right yellow was so difficult — it was too green, too orange, too cold, too warm.
Until I realised balance is not a permanent perfection. It is something that feels right now. And when I allowed that to be enough, it was.
How does Yellow differ from the other Colours?
Yellow holds the others within it. Where Green is about feeling and Red about will, Yellow is about seeing — genuinely. Once the Goddess of Balance finds her equilibrium, she can gather the other forces into harmony. Just as we must learn to integrate and harmonise the different parts within of ourselves -and between us as a society.
What do you hope viewers feel when they experience the Yellow paintings or prints?
Courage.
The courage to see their life and their moment genuinely. To look beyond immediate definitions and sense that they are capable of navigating life’s movement. In each moment, balance is possible — if we are willing to see.
To read more about the Yellow Space, dive into her exhibition here: The Yellow Space
Find the Yellow Print that calls to you:
. 
