Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Turret Sleeps in Undergrowth

A small toy tank, the kind that once sat on a child's shelf or was pushed across a bedroom floor, turret raised as if still on watch. In this new work it rests differently, drawn not with paint but by taking material away, so that its whole flank sleeps under a coat of green.

The hull, the tracks, the long raised barrel keep only what the light needs to describe them. Thick contour lines hold the shape together, and coarse fields of fine marks stand in for the sheen a real tank would throw off, gathered only on the side that would catch a low sun. Everything else, the underside of the turret, the shadowed flank, is left as pure black, a silhouette the eye completes from memory rather than from information given.

The colour is not decoration. Green is the colour of the undergrowth this small machine was built to disappear into, the colour of camouflage and of things left outside long enough to be reclaimed by grass. Scratched into deep green coloured mirror glass, the toy tank seems to have come to rest exactly where it was always headed, half sunk into a field of fine, loose marks that read as grass at its tracks.

Around it the room keeps intruding. Walls, spotlights, a low plinth, whoever is standing in front of the work, all move across the green surface between the scratches, so the gallery becomes the field the tank is sleeping in. The viewer is not looking at the piece from outside it; standing there, at that moment, is part of the picture.

The image is always present in the surface, with or without direct light. What changes is only the depth of the reflection around it: under a stronger light the contrast deepens and the marks catch and hold more brightly, but the tank does not appear or vanish, and it does not depend on the viewer's angle to exist. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it.

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.

"Even a machine can sleep, once the grass has grown back over it."

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.