Elfriede Dreyer, Up there is a green patch, 2021. Mixed media on Perspex, presented in Perspex box size 1120x1270x100mm.

I use the colour green conceptually in representation of the pursuit of a good place, an ideal state or a wonderful dream, pleasure or escapism. Green articulates with Arcadia, a utopian form closely related to ideas of paradise and aimed at the reconciliation with nature. Humans’ relationship with nature is a fundamental one that has taken on many guises in literature and the arts. In Romantic art nature is presented as the ideal place for humans to be and it is suggested that humans should be reconciled with nature. Nature’s goodness has often been associated with the green, also human conditions of happiness and contentment. Cities could then be seen as the antidote that is not a good place for humans to be.