Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Ember Dots on a Sleeping Cheek

She keeps her eyes closed. In Ember Dots on a Sleeping Cheek, a heroine borrowed from the language of 1960s romance and war comics turns her face away from the story and simply rests, and it is that stillness, not the drama of the panel she came from, that survives into the mirror glass.

Nothing here is added. No paint, no print, no ink was put down on this surface. The image exists only where the surface has been taken away: a field of individual marks scratched into deep red coloured mirror glass, left to catch the room's light the way skin catches a lamp. The heavy contour of her cap, the halftone dots scattered like sparks across her cheek and jaw, the soft weight of her closed eyes, all of it is drawn by absence, by what has been removed rather than what has been laid on top.

Red carries the feeling here. It is the colour of warmth held just under the skin, of a blush, of something banked low and glowing rather than burning, echoed in the ember dots that seem to drift and settle across her sleeping face. The colour does not decorate the image, it is the temperature of the moment itself, private, warm, unguarded.

Up close the face dissolves into a field of scratches, coarse dotted textures and thick contour lines held apart by wide black margins and a deep, unlit void around her. Step back and she reassembles into a single calm profile, monumental against the red. The work asks for both distances, the intimacy of the mark and the clarity of the whole.

The mirror never lets you stand outside the picture. Around her stilled face, the room you stand in, its light fixtures, its walls, its passing figures, appears in the untouched glass, so your own reflection settles in beside hers. She sleeps, you look, and for a moment both are held in the same red surface.

Light does not create this face. It sharpens it, deepens the ember glow of the dots and the pale line of her cheek, while the reflection around her shifts with the room, the image itself never moving. 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. This work is unique.

"Even asleep, she keeps the room close, and pulls it into her light."

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.