Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Venus Traced in Wild Bramble

Venus Traced in Wild Bramble takes the most quoted body in art history, the broken marble goddess of the Louvre, and gives her back a surface through absence rather than restoration. Here she is formed from a field of fine scratches set into deep green coloured mirror glass, her turned head, curled hair and bared torso standing where the coloured surface has been taken away rather than added to.

Green carries the myth forward on its own terms. It is the colour of laurel and bramble, of things that grow wild around old ruins, and it settles Venus in something closer to earth than white museum marble, so the goddess of love returns as a figure still rooted in nature rather than sealed behind glass.

Around her, the deep green coloured mirror glass holds the room. Look at the work and you also catch the wall behind you, the shape of whoever is standing near it, drawn into the same green field that holds the goddess. She is presented, but never closed off from the space she hangs in, and the viewer becomes part of the composition.

The image is always there, in every light. A single hard source across the room deepens the contrast and lets the field of individual marks catch and hold the light, but nothing here needs to be switched on to be seen. Light does not create this Venus. It sharpens her.

Up close the monumental figure dissolves into a field of fine scratches, each one part of a larger current running through her hair, her shoulder, the drape at her hip. Step back and the goddess reassembles herself, whole again in outline if not in limb, still carrying the fracture that has followed her for two thousand years.

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. This work is unique.

"She was broken long before she was found, and still she stands."

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.