Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Waist Deep in Stillness

Waist Deep in Stillness pictures a figure with a moon for a head, standing waist deep in a sea so still it reads as a single black plane. In its hands, held just above the waterline, is a small paper boat, a fragile vessel offered to a horizon that gives nothing back. There is no wind in this image, no ripple, only the immense quiet of a world that has stopped to watch.

The scene is not painted or printed onto the surface. It is scratched into deep blue coloured mirror glass, drawn out through controlled surface damage rather than added with pigment. Every line of the figure, the boat and the horizon exists because material was taken away, not because anything was laid on top.

Blue carries the weight of the piece. It is the colour of night water, of distance, of a stillness that is not empty but full of held breath, and it settles around the moon headed figure like the sea it stands in.

Because the surface is mirror, the room enters the work. Around and between the scratches, the space you stand in and your own reflection appear, so that looking at Waist Deep in Stillness means standing at the edge of that same black sea, boat in hand, horizon ahead.

From a distance the piece reads as one clear, monumental image, a single figure holding stillness in its palms. Step closer and it opens into a field of controlled scratches, a surface that only resolves back into the figure once you step away again.

The image is always there, with or without direct light. Light does not create it, it sharpens it: under a stronger source the scratches catch and the contrast deepens, while what shifts around the figure is only the reflection, never the image itself.

Waist Deep in Stillness 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 things are not meant to reach the shore. They are meant to be held."

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.