Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Pepper Curls Into Red

A chili pepper curls against the red like a single gesture caught mid motion (paragraph 2: 'bright against the red field around it'), the stem twisting back on itself as if the whole form were coiling with its own heat. There is nothing else in the frame, no table, no kitchen, no context, only the shape itself, isolated and monumental, the way an object becomes a symbol once everything around it is taken away.

No paint, no print, no ink. The image is formed through removal, a field of individual marks worked into the surface of deep red coloured mirror glass until the curve of the pepper emerges as a field of fine scratches, bright against the dark field around it. Seen up close, the body of the pepper dissolves into countless small, directional marks, and only from a distance does it resolve back into a single, fluid line.

Red carries its own charge here. It is the colour of heat and appetite, of warning and desire at once, and setting the pepper into a surface that is itself red lets the material and the subject speak the same language, so the glow of the form seems to rise straight out of the colour it is made from.

Because the ground is mirrored, the room you stand in becomes part of the work. Walls, light fixtures, your own outline slide into the red around the scratched form, so the piece never sits still the way a print does. You are not looking at the pepper from outside, you are looking at it from inside a space that includes you.

The image is always present, in daylight as in gallery spotlighting. Light does not create it, light sharpens it, deepening the contrast and giving the scratched surface more shine and depth as it shifts. What changes with the room is the reflection around the form, never the form itself.

A Pepper Curls Into Red 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. This work is unique.

"Damage, held still, becomes shape, and shape, held in red, becomes feeling."

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.