Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - The Trust of a Fall

She leans back until gravity becomes a decision. He holds the floor, wide and still, the only fixed point in the frame. Between them is trust, made visible in the shape of a body given fully to another person's hands.

The scene sits in near-total darkness, a single beam falling from above, rim light tracing the edge of two silhouettes locked in a dip. Everything else is pure black, negative space that lets the gesture speak, with only a faint reflection on the floor to confirm the ground is still there.

No paint. No print. No ink. The image is scratched into the surface of the acrylic glass, built through controlled scratches rather than any layer added on top. It is not applied onto the surface, it is removed from it, mark by mark, until a spine, a stance and a beam of light remain.

Seen from across a room, the work reads as one clean, monumental gesture, a couple suspended mid fall. Step closer, and that certainty dissolves into a field of controlled surface damage, before it resolves again the moment you step back.

The image is always there, in any light. Light does not create it, it sharpens it: under a direct beam the scratches catch and gather, the contrast deepens, the dip gains weight. Shift the angle and the work reads more quietly, closer to shadow, but the couple never leaves the glass they were scratched into.

Every deep dip is an act of trust before it is an act of skill. She commits her spine, her balance, her full weight to a hand she cannot see holding her. The Trust of a Fall asks a quiet question about surrender, about the strength it takes to let go, and about who is really holding whom.

The Trust of a Fall 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.

"Trust is not given standing still. It is given falling."

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.