Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Spine Arched in Embers

In this work a figure lifts both arms overhead and lets her spine arch back, a gesture of release more than defiance, held in a language borrowed from the comic panel: bold contour, a coarse field of dots, a body reduced to pattern and light.

Nothing here is printed or painted onto the surface. Every contour and every dot across her shoulders and skin is a controlled scratch cut into the coloured mirror glass, the image arriving through removal, not addition. Seen up close she dissolves into a field of individual marks, a field of fine scratches; step back and she reassembles into a single monumental gesture.

The mirror glass is red, and the red is not decoration. It carries the heat of the title, the ember glow beneath a body caught mid stretch, the flush of exertion and of something more intimate, the colour of a pulse rather than a costume.

Because this figure is scratched into a mirror rather than printed on canvas, the room around her never stays still. The gallery wall, the passing visitor, your own reflection slide into the gaps between the scratches, so that looking at the work means, for a moment, becoming part of it.

Light does not create this image. It sharpens it. The figure is present whether the room is bright or dim, and under a direct light the scratches catch and the contrast deepens, though the pose and the pattern never depend on where you stand to exist.

This work 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.

"She does not perform for the mirror. She becomes it."

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.