Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Shift Ends in Light

A bench, a bare wall, and a cone of light that has been burning all night. Within it a nurse sits folded over her own knees, done with a shift that has not quite finished letting go of her, the kind of stillness that only arrives when a body has given out every last thing it had to give.

Behind her the light keeps working. What should be a plain, tired shadow climbs the wall and refuses to stay small, widening at the shoulders, lifting into a standing form, and opening into two unmistakable wings. The eye cannot hold both readings at once, the slumped woman catching her breath on the bench, and the upright, winged presence rising directly out of her outline, and it keeps sliding between them instead of settling.

Nothing in the room explains which of the two is the truer likeness. The woman knows only the ache in her feet and the weight of a night that asked more of her than anyone saw. The wall has already decided she is also something else, a guardian shape thrown at full height the moment the shift ends, as if the care she spent had to go somewhere and chose the wall to keep it.

The piece does not resolve the two into one. It leaves them standing together, the exhausted body and the winged outline it casts, and lets the viewer decide how much of a person is visible only in what falls away from them at the end of a long day.

No paint. No print. No ink. The glow of that light and the whole standing, winged shape behind her exist only where controlled scratches have opened the acrylic glass, a field of fine scratches that catch and reflect the light. The image is always present, in daylight as much as after dark. Light does not create it. It sharpens it, pulling the wings further from the woman who, without knowing it, throws them.

A Shift Ends in Light belongs to Look Twice, a series within Art with Scratch by Tijs Dragtsma in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print, and in which that same damage becomes a way of letting one figure hold two readings at once, the worn body and the winged being, without the eye ever being allowed to choose between them.

"Some wings are only visible once the body that carries them has finally stopped moving."

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.

This listing contains AI-generated visualisations. Please refer to the original photographs to assess the actual condition of the object.