Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Two Profiles Kissed by Fire

Two profiles lean toward each other until the space between them all but disappears, the moment before a kiss held in a single suspended breath. Nothing here is added. The image exists only because the surface around it was taken away, a field of individual marks scratched into deep red coloured mirror glass until two faces rose out of the dark.

Up close the work dissolves into texture, coarse fields of fine scratches gathered like static across hair and shoulder, giving way to the sparse, deliberate contour lines that carry the nose, the lips, the closed eye. Step back and those same marks resolve into the couple, monumental and still, holding a single gesture that needs no story beyond itself.

Red carries the weight of the piece as much as the drawing does, the colour of blood warmth and want, of a moment too charged to stay quiet. It sits behind the figures like heat behind glass, so the kiss reads as much as felt as seen.

The mirror never lets you stand outside the work. Around the two profiles, the room you stand in, its light, its walls, your own outline, gathers in the untouched glass, so the space of looking becomes part of the composition itself. You do not just view this piece. You are folded into it.

The image is always there, present in the surface whether or not a light is aimed at it. What changes is only the depth of the room reflected around it and the sharpness of the contrast when light does fall across the scratches. Light does not create this kiss. It sharpens it.

Two Profiles Kissed by Fire 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 kisses are not remembered in words, only in the light they leave behind."

About Art on Mirror – Red

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 red 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 red. 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 red 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.

Red is the colour of blood, of fire and of everything we cannot stay calm about. 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.