Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Berry Traced in Red

"A Berry Traced in Red" holds a single strawberry as a field of individual marks, scratched rather than painted into the surface of deep red mirror glass. The crown and the seeds emerge first, gathered dense and certain where the light would naturally fall, while the lower curve of the fruit lets go, thinning into the mirror until it is almost gone.

That imbalance carries the piece. One side of the strawberry is fully drawn, its contour firm, its skin dense with fine white marks. The other side is barely sketched, the same fruit held in two states at once, fully present and quietly fading, as if it remembers being whole.

Red carries its own weight here. It is the colour of the ripened fruit itself, but pressed into mirror glass it turns into something closer to desire or warning, a colour that pulls the eye before the shape does.

Nothing is added to this surface. No paint, no print, no ink. What you see is the absence left where the material has been taken away, a field of fine scratches standing in for pigment.

Because this is coloured mirror glass, the room keeps entering the picture. Whoever stands in front of it is folded into the red behind the fruit, and the space around the strawberry keeps shifting even while the marks themselves stay exactly where they were placed.

Light does not create this image. It sharpens it. Under a direct beam the scratches catch and hold, the contrast deepens and the seeds seem to lift off the surface, but the strawberry was always there, in the dark as much as in the light.

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.

"Half kept, half let go, and red enough to remember."

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.