Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - The Shield Held in Red

The shield arrives close, almost too close, the way it would if you were standing beside the car itself rather than looking at a photograph of one. The rearing horse fills the frame, caught mid motion, its mane and legs drawn in a single confident white line against a field left otherwise untouched. There is no ground, no car, no context. Only the badge, monumental, the way a crest looks when it has stopped being decoration and started being a claim.

No paint. No print. No ink. The image is formed by controlled scratches worked into the surface of the coloured mirror glass itself, not applied onto it afterward. The horse, the border, the small coarse field of marks that catch and hold the light along one side of the shield, all of it exists because material was taken away, not added. Seen from across a room the shield reads whole and immediate. Up close it dissolves into that same field of fine scratches, structure rather than image, until you step back and it becomes a horse again.

The light in this piece is deliberately one sided, as if a single lamp were drawn low across the badge in a dark showroom. That asymmetry is not decorative, it is how the eye understands a crest meant to be read in a glance, from a passing car, across a paddock, in half a second of recognition. Light does not create this image. It sharpens what is already scratched into the surface, deepening the contrast between the lit flank of the shield and the half that stays in true black.

Red carries the piece as much as the horse does. It is the colour this badge has worn since it first meant anything, the colour of speed treated as a kind of nerve, of risk made presentable, of a brand that turned urgency into elegance. Cast across coloured mirror glass, that red stops being paint on a car and becomes atmosphere, a field the horse rears out of and the viewer stands inside of.

Because the surface is mirrored, the room itself becomes part of the composition. Whoever stands in front of this work sees themselves folded faintly into the red behind the horse, a reflection caught between the scratched lines, present in the same frame as the icon. The work does not end at its edge, it continues into whoever is looking at it.

This piece 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 badges are worn. This one is cut into the surface, and it still looks back at you."

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.

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