Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - The Face Between Directions

The Face Between Directions begins as a mystery of angles. Two profiles turn away from each other, each looking outward into its own silence, and yet between them a third face gathers, looking straight ahead, meeting the viewer without hesitation. Nothing here was drawn or printed. The face exists because the surface has been taken away, not added to.

The anatomy bends in ways the eye should reject, yet somehow accepts. A brow becomes a cheekbone, a jaw dissolves into a second temple, and the features connect along lines that feel more like memory than structure. It is a face built from contradiction, an image that only holds together because light allows it to.

That light is the true subject of the piece. Against pure blackness, only the brightest contours survive, so the work lives in extremes, in what is kept and what is erased. Move past it and the face can vanish into shadow, then return as the angle shifts, as if identity itself were something that has to be found again and again rather than simply seen.

From across a room, the piece reads as one monumental presence, a single face holding three directions at once. Step closer and that presence breaks into a quiet field of controlled scratches on acrylic glass, each mark holding no meaning alone, together forming a gaze that cannot be pinned to one direction.

There is something deeply human in that duality. We rarely look only one way. We face outward toward others while something in us keeps watching straight ahead, unresolved, undecided, waiting to be understood. This work gives that inner tension a form, built from what has been removed rather than what has been placed.

The Face Between Directions continues the Art with Scratch series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print. A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.

"Between two directions, a third face waits to be seen."

About Art with Scratch

Art with Scratch is a body of work in which the image is not drawn, but released. Carved line by line into a deep black surface, each work emerges through countless precise scratches that catch the light and bring form out of darkness.

From a distance, the image appears almost photographic. Powerful, recognisable and full of presence. Yet up close, the work dissolves into a dense field of individual marks. Fine, fragile and almost weightless. What seemed solid reveals itself as a delicate web of lines, each one a deliberate gesture, each one essential to the whole.

Light does not create the image. It sharpens it. The black surface absorbs, while the scratched lines reflect. As light shifts across the surface, the image breathes. From one angle the figure stands clear and defined. From another it softens and settles back toward the darkness from which it came, without ever disappearing. Under a focused spotlight, the contrast deepens and the image takes on a sculptural, almost luminous quality.

What makes this medium so compelling is its quiet tension. The act of scratching is direct and irreversible. Every line is a decision that cannot be undone. Yet the result is not harsh. It is intimate, atmospheric and alive with movement. Hardness becomes softness. Destruction becomes creation. Absence becomes presence.

In works such as this portrait, the figure is never fully fixed. Through the interplay of line, light and shadow, the image shifts with perspective and atmosphere. At certain moments, the subject seems to step forward out of the black. At others, it settles back into stillness. It is within that movement, between sharpness and calm, that the work comes alive.

Like all materials touched by time, the surface carries its own quiet life. Each scratch holds a moment, a breath, a gesture. Together they form not just an image, but a presence, one that continues to reveal itself with every change of light.

About the Artist

My name is Tijs Dragtsma, founder of TD Fine Art Studio.

As an artist, I am driven by a constant desire to explore new visual languages. I do not see art as a fixed style, but as an evolving field of discovery where material, structure, light and emotion come together.

My work often begins with a simple question. How can a material speak in a new way. How can hardness become intimacy. How can precision create emotion. That search lies at the heart of everything I create.

Within TD Fine Art Studio, each body of work is approached as its own world, with its own logic, atmosphere and visual identity. Some works are built through rhythm, repetition and structure. Others emerge through absence, shadow, reflection or tension. What connects them is a shared commitment to originality, clarity and emotional presence.

I am fascinated by contrast. Between strength and fragility. Between control and feeling. Between what is visible and what is left open to interpretation. My goal is not simply to make an image, but to create a work that holds attention, invites reflection and continues to reveal itself over time.

TD Fine Art Studio is the space in which these explorations come together. It is not only a studio, but an evolving artistic universe shaped by curiosity, precision and the ambition to create work that feels distinctive, intentional and alive.