Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Liberty in the Green

She rises from the dark in profile, torch arm lifted, crown catching what little light there is. Nothing here is added. The image exists only because the surface has been taken away, a field of individual marks left to carry her shape out of deep green coloured mirror glass.

From across the room she is monumental, a single gesture of defiance and hope held against the void. Step closer and the figure dissolves into a field of fine scratches, each one placed, none of them announcing itself alone.

Green is not incidental here. It is the colour time gives to copper left outdoors for more than a century, the colour of a promise that has weathered and still stands. The glass carries that patina as its own skin, so the symbol and the material finally agree.

The mirror does not step aside for the image. Around her raised arm and through the dark folds of her robe, the room keeps showing itself, the walls, the other works, whoever is standing in front of her. She was built to hold a crowd in her gaze, and this surface quietly insists that the viewer is part of what is being looked at.

Light does not create this image. It sharpens it. Under a direct source the scratches catch and the contrast deepens, the torch and crown pulling forward out of the green, but she is there in dim rooms too, never waiting to be switched on.

Liberty in the 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.

"Some promises need to weather before you can trust them."

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.