Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Steel Beneath the Skin

A figure steps out of pure black, leather jacket catching a hard, cold light, sunglasses turning the eyes into flat, unreadable mirrors. Nothing moves. Nothing needs to. This is stillness as threat, calm as inevitability.

The face gives nothing away. That is the point. Beneath the leather and the skin there is something else, something that does not tire, does not doubt, does not stop. The image does not show it directly. It suggests it, the way a shadow suggests a shape.

No paint. No print. No ink. This portrait is built through controlled scratches worked into acrylic glass, the surface opened rather than covered, the figure formed by what has been taken away rather than what has been added. There is a quiet symmetry in that, a story about steel hidden beneath skin, told through a surface where the image is not laid on top, but cut into what is already there.

The work is always present, with or without direct light. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it. Under a raking light, the scratches catch and the contrast deepens, the jacket and the glasses gaining a metallic edge. It reads differently from different angles, without ever losing the image, the same way this figure never loses its stillness.

From across a room the portrait reads as monumental, a single dark, upright presence against an expanse of black. Close up, that presence resolves into a field of controlled surface damage, individual marks that only settle into a face, a jacket, a pair of glasses, at the right distance. Closeness reveals the marks. Distance reveals the myth.

Steel Beneath the Skin continues the Art with Scratch series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print. A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.

"Some things are not damaged. They are built that way."

About Art with Scratch

Art with Scratch is a body of work in which the image is not drawn, but released. Carved line by line into a deep black surface, each work emerges through countless precise scratches that catch the light and bring form out of darkness.

From a distance, the image appears almost photographic. Powerful, recognisable and full of presence. Yet up close, the work dissolves into a dense field of individual marks. Fine, fragile and almost weightless. What seemed solid reveals itself as a delicate web of lines, each one a deliberate gesture, each one essential to the whole.

Light does not create the image. It sharpens it. The black surface absorbs, while the scratched lines reflect. As light shifts across the surface, the image breathes. From one angle the figure stands clear and defined. From another it softens and settles back toward the darkness from which it came, without ever disappearing. Under a focused spotlight, the contrast deepens and the image takes on a sculptural, almost luminous quality.

What makes this medium so compelling is its quiet tension. The act of scratching is direct and irreversible. Every line is a decision that cannot be undone. Yet the result is not harsh. It is intimate, atmospheric and alive with movement. Hardness becomes softness. Destruction becomes creation. Absence becomes presence.

In works such as this portrait, the figure is never fully fixed. Through the interplay of line, light and shadow, the image shifts with perspective and atmosphere. At certain moments, the subject seems to step forward out of the black. At others, it settles back into stillness. It is within that movement, between sharpness and calm, that the work comes alive.

Like all materials touched by time, the surface carries its own quiet life. Each scratch holds a moment, a breath, a gesture. Together they form not just an image, but a presence, one that continues to reveal itself with every change of light.

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.