Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Crown Split Into Embers

A pomegranate, cut open and held still, becomes something closer to a crest. At the top, the dried crown of the fruit survives as a knot of fine scratched lines, fragile and regal at once. Around it, the rind opens into a wide field of individual marks, a bright ring that catches the eye before the gaze is pulled inward.

Inside, the seed clusters stay almost entirely dark, left untouched, so they read as dense silhouettes rather than fruit. Only their outer edges catch light, a scattering of coarse white marks tracing where each cluster meets the next, as if embers were cooling at the rim while their core stayed black. The white does not fill the fruit, it defines it, and everything the light does not reach falls away into the surrounding void.

The surface itself is a deep red, and here the colour is not decoration. Red is the colour of the fruit split open, of the seeds it protects, and of the void that now holds them. It runs to every edge of the coloured mirror glass, so the fruit seems to float inside its own colour rather than sit in front of it.

Because the surface is mirrored, the room joins the image. A gallery wall, a passing figure, a track of ceiling lights, all drift into the red field around the fruit, so the piece is never only a still life. The person standing in front of it becomes part of what is reflected, caught inside the same red that holds the pomegranate together.

The pomegranate has always carried more than its own weight, a crown shaped like a fruit, seeds counted in old stories as a bargain between worlds, a symbol of what is kept and what is given away. Here that crown is not lost, it is scattered, its shape held together only by light and by the dark seeds it once protected.

The marks are always present in the surface, not hidden and not switched on by a spotlight. Light does not create this image, it sharpens what is already there, deepening the contrast between the glowing rind and the dark heart it surrounds. 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 crown does not need to stay whole to still mean something."

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.