Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Where Stone Learns to Fly

A staircase begins its climb as solid stone and ends it as a scatter of wings, and nowhere in between can you say exactly where one stops and the other starts. The lowest steps are still ground, still weight, still the kind of thing a foot would trust. By the top they have thinned into feather and flight, already gone.

Nothing marks the moment of change. One tread folds into the next, each a little lighter than the one before, until stone has simply become bird without ever announcing the shift. It is the quiet trick at the center of the work, an ascent that promises arrival and delivers departure instead.

No paint. No print. No ink. The stair and its birds exist because the surface of the acrylic glass has been taken away, a field of fine scratches worked into it until each tread and each wingtip has something to hold the light. Around them the black stays black, untouched, the one true quiet in a work built entirely from caught brightness.

The image is always present, in flat daylight as much as under a single trained lamp. Light does not create what is here. It sharpens it, so a direct source deepens the stair into sharper stone and draws out the gathering shine of each bird, while a softer angle lets the whole climb settle back into a quieter glow. It reads differently from different angles, without ever losing the image.

From across a room the piece reads as one continuous gesture, a single staircase caught mid transformation. Up close that certainty breaks apart into a field of individual marks, a surface that only resolves back into stone and wing once the eye steps away again.

Where Stone Learns to Fly 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 holding the patience it takes to keep climbing in a world that does not add up. The work is inspired by M. C. Escher, by buildings that could be drawn but could never stand, where up and down trade places and the eye accepts every part before it refuses the whole.

"Some stairs are not built to be climbed. They are built to be let go of."

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.