Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - David in the Green

David in the Green brings Michelangelo's most famous head into a material that does not exist in Florence: deep green mirror glass, scratched rather than carved. The three quarter turn is kept intact, the furrowed brow, the marble curls, the gaze fixed somewhere just past the viewer, all of it formed not by addition but by removal, a field of individual marks standing in for centuries of chisel work.

Green carries its own weight here. It is the colour of patina, of bronze and stone that have survived long enough to change colour with age, and it settles over David the way time settles over any monument that has outlasted its own moment. The youth who once stood for a city's defiance now stands inside a colour that speaks of endurance rather than triumph.

No paint, no print, no pigment. The image is scratched into the surface of the coloured mirror glass, and it stays there, present with or without direct light. What light adds is not the picture itself but its depth: under a stronger source the marks catch and hold the light, the contrast deepens, the curls seem to turn in their own shadow. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it.

From across a room the head resolves into something monumental, a single dark and pale mass instantly recognisable. Close up, that certainty dissolves into a field of fine scratches, individual and unruly, that only agree to become a face at a distance. Between those two readings is where the work actually lives.

Because the ground is mirror, not wall, the room keeps entering the piece. Whoever stands in front of David is drawn into the surface around the bust, faintly present among the marks, watched by a face that has itself been watched for five centuries. Looking at the work becomes a way of standing inside it.

David in the Green 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. This work is unique.

"Some faces are carved once and remembered forever. This one is scratched into green, and asks to be looked at again."

About Art on Mirror – Green

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 green 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 green. 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 green 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.

Green is the colour of growth, of forests and of things that keep returning. 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.