Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Windblown Beneath the Stars

Windblown Beneath the Stars begins with a face caught mid turn, hair torn sideways by a wind that never quite settles, curls unraveling into the dark. Everything soft in the original drawing has been reduced to two states only, the light that survives and the black that does not, so what remains is a face built entirely out of restraint.

Nothing here was added. Every strand of hair, every fleck of light across the cheekbone, every small point scattered like frost or falling snow was taken away from a solid field of blue, not drawn onto it. That is the quiet discipline of this series, the image appears through removal, through a field of individual marks and controlled scratches cut into the surface rather than any pigment or print laid over it.

The glass is a deep, cold blue, and that colour is not decoration here. Blue is night sky and open air, the colour of distance and of holding still against a wind that wants to move you, and it settles around this figure the way memory settles around a moment you were sure would blow away and somehow didn't.

From across the room the face reads whole, monumental, caught in that one suspended instant. Step closer and it dissolves into a field of fine scratches and scattered points, a private constellation that only resolves back into a face once you step away again, the same way stars only become a sky from a distance.

The image is always there, with or without direct light, it does not vanish and it is never switched on. What changes is only what light does to it, under a stronger glow the scratches catch and shine and the contrast deepens, and around the figure the room itself, and you, drift into the mirrored blue, so that looking at her means finding yourself caught in the same wind.

Windblown Beneath the Stars continues the Art on Mirror series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which scratched imagery is set into coloured mirror glass and the viewer becomes part of the work, a visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure, and where the mirror turns looking into taking part.

"Some faces are not lit. They are uncovered."

About Art on Mirror – Blue

Art on Mirror is a body of work in which the image is scratched into coloured mirror glass, and the world in front of the work becomes part of it. Every line is cut into a deep blue mirrored surface of acrylic glass. The scratches are always there, bright against the colour, while the surface around them keeps reflecting the room, the daylight and the person looking.

From a distance the image reads clear and complete, a pale figure held in a field of blue. Step closer and the work opens into a delicate web of individual marks, fine and deliberate, each one essential to the whole. Behind and between them the mirror does what a mirror does. It carries the room and the viewer into the composition, so the surroundings in the work change with the place where it hangs, while the image itself stays firmly in place.

Light does not create the image. It sharpens it. The blue ground absorbs and reflects, the scratched lines catch and hold, and under a focused spotlight the contrast deepens until the figure takes on a sculptural, almost luminous quality. In softer light the colour comes forward and the work settles into a quieter register, without ever losing its subject.

Blue is the colour of night, of deep water and of quiet distance. That is the emotional ground every work in this series is set against, and the subjects are chosen to belong to it.

Art on Mirror continues the scratched imagery of Art with Scratch by Tijs Dragtsma on a new ground. Where the black works draw their power from absence, these draw it from reflection. The viewer is no longer only looking at the work. The viewer is in it.

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.