Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Bruce Lee Cut From the Beam

Bruce Lee Cut From the Beam holds him in the instant before the strike, fists raised, weight low, the whole body coiled into a stance that needs no caption to be recognised. Nothing about the fighter is spelled out. The face is left as pure dark, the features withheld, and it is the posture alone, the readiness in the shoulders and the set of the legs, that carries who he is.

Above him a single shaft of light falls from the dark, and that beam is where the work happens. A field of individual marks has been scratched into deep red coloured mirror glass, dense where the light is strongest, thinning as it reaches the floor, so the beam itself seems to be made of struck matches rather than paint. The figure below it stays in near total black, a silhouette holding its ground inside the light rather than dissolving into it.

Red carries its own charge here. It is the colour of blood and of fight, of a body pushed to its edge, and against it the pale scratches read like sparks thrown off contact. The image is not applied onto the surface. It exists because material has been taken away, a controlled field of surface damage that catches the eye exactly where the light in the source image would have fallen.

Because the surface is mirrored, the room enters the piece. Gallery walls, other frames, the viewer's own outline settle into the red around the fighter and drift across the polished floor beneath him, so anyone standing in front of the work becomes part of its stage. The beam of scratches stays fixed regardless of who is looking, present in daylight as much as under a spotlight.

Light does not create the image here. It sharpens it, deepening the contrast between the glowing beam and the black weight of the body until the whole stance seems to hum. Turn away and the fighter remains exactly where he was, caught mid breath under his own private spotlight.

Bruce Lee Cut From the Beam 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.

"Stillness held at the edge of a strike, lit from above, cut from red."

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.