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Cycling or walking through Ypenburg, you don't just spot a variety of birds curiously watching passersby from the eaves or gables. Here and there, a woman's face also looks down on you. She is invariably on the corner of a house, as if she were the figurehead of a ship. That is not the only reference to the sea that this artwork carries. Her head is surrounded by shells and other sea creatures and plants. With her Mermaid of the Fields, Van den Berg refers to Ypenburg's distant past. Where once was the eponymous airport and now a sprawling Vinex neighborhood, long ago there was the sea. The artist wanted to make that piece of history visible in the neighborhood.

Van den Berg is known in The Hague for her accurate figurative portraits of humans, animals and plants. In all the representations she draws, prints, paints or models, she seems to meticulously reproduce reality. Yet, by her own admission, she does not strive for that. She finds inspiration in the things that come her way every day. From her enthusiasm for the possibilities that different materials and techniques bring her, she expresses the experience of them.

The Mermaid of the Fields created by Van den Berg for Ypenburg is executed in ceramic. By glazing each copy of the edition by hand, the color scheme is slightly different each time.