Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Vine Keeps Its Ember

A Vine Keeps Its Ember begins with something almost too ordinary to notice twice, a tomato still fixed to its vine, its star shaped calyx open like a small crown, its stem curling off into the dark. Nothing about the subject asks for attention, and that is exactly the point. The work takes the most domestic object in the kitchen and sets it alone in a void, until its outline becomes the only thing left to look at.

The tomato is not painted or printed into being. It is formed by controlled scratches worked directly into the surface of deep red coloured mirror glass, a field of fine marks that thickens into dense halftone dotting where the light would naturally catch a ripe, rounded skin, and thins to nothing on the side left in shadow. The body of the fruit stays unlit and solid, a dark shape cut clean out of its own glow, so the eye reads roundness and weight without a single drawn line describing it.

Red is not a background choice here. It is the colour the tomato already carries inside itself, the flush of ripeness, the warmth held at the end of a vine before it is ever picked, and the mirror glass lets that colour surround the fruit the way its own skin would.

The image is always present in the surface, not applied onto it, visible with or without direct light. Light does not create this tomato. It sharpens it, deepening the contrast between the glowing dots and the dark unlit flesh, so the scratches catch and hold the room's light rather than wait for it.

Because the ground is mirror, not paper or canvas, the space around the fruit is never empty. Walls, light fixtures, the floor, the person standing in front of it, all drift into the dark field between the marks, so the viewer is pulled into the same void the tomato hangs in. From across a room the piece reads as one monumental, glowing form. Up close it dissolves into nothing but a field of individual marks, patient and exact, with the subject's quiet life still humming underneath.

A Vine Keeps Its Ember 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.

"Even the simplest thing left on the vine still burns, if you know where to look."

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.