Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Room Scattered in Green

A single die, oversized and stripped of realism, does not stand whole in this work. It is scattered, its pips loosened into a field of individual marks that drift across the surface as if the throw were still in motion, the outcome not yet settled.

Green carries the memory of the gaming table here, the felt beneath every dice game ever played, the colour of chance held just before it turns into consequence. It is not decoration, it is the mood the whole image is built from.

The image exists because material was taken away, not added. No paint, no print, sits on this surface, only a field of controlled scratches worked directly into the coloured mirror glass until the die's pips began to glow out of the dark.

The image is always present, with or without direct light. Light does not create it, light sharpens it, deepening the contrast where the marks catch and pulling the surrounding room into sharper focus around them.

Step closer and the die dissolves into pure texture, an intimate field of individual scratches with no single form left to hold onto. Step back and it gathers itself into a shape suspended in deep green, monumental against all that dark.

Because this is coloured mirror glass, the room and the person standing in front of it are folded into the same green depth, appearing faintly between the scattered marks. The die was thrown once, in a story no one remembers, but the room scattered around it keeps being rewritten by whoever stands here now.

A Room Scattered in Green 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.

"The dice are cast, and the room keeps watching."

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.