Author's text:

Who needs you there? Somehow, together with this phrase the green of spruces and pines in a gloomy winter forest comes to my mind. Maybe that is my personal association that arises from my very provincial early childhood.

I tried to create the effect of this green using four colours.

I looked up for an article about the green written by the Belarusian specialist in colour studies Lenina Mironava, found interesting opinions of Sergei Eisenstein and Wassily Kandinsky there. I checked google maps and it turned out that Libya, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia are completely ochre yellow even though their flags are almost entirely green. All in all, the colour is curious. It includes both “paradise” and decay, bliss and dullness.

The colour has become political in Belarus although it was not such at the beginning of the protests when people went out with both flags. In addition, even though you realise it only later on the majority of military machines and clothes are of this colour. Even the shade is almost the same that I am looking for.

In order to get the green that I need I have to mix all four colours that I work with, the whole CMYK. It also reveals the nature of this colour where a bunch of images and ideas that can be often controversial are mixed. It is not without reason that it is used for camouflage. It is sticky and tightening. It matches the phrase the best. I do not know whether this landscape reference that creates the environment is needed but for me that is where the green uncovers itself.

Gloomy weather is not the most popular subject for impressionists. However, so-called Russian impressionism has plenty of works like that. Take Isaac Levitan for instance. It is a little bit further away from Europe, closer to Asia. Maybe that is why the phrase “who needs you there?” is connected with an image of a green gloomy coniferous forest for me. There is still something deeply local in this combination.

Parasites’ green is very distinct and bright. The same as moss or mistletoe.

There are several ways how to make the green: to make a bright background dirty, to try to lighten or give more colour to black, to add all components gradually and evenly. Detached from materiality it continues preserving the whole complex of feelings, at least my personal feelings. These three complex ways influence the feelings as well.