Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - The Grip Before the Roar

There is a second before the roar, and this is it. The Grip Before the Roar holds Elvis Presley not as spectacle but as coiled stillness, one hand closed around a vintage microphone, the body caught mid breath, already moving before the sound arrives. This is the instant rock and roll found its silhouette, the shape a generation would recognize before it recognized the man.

Rendered in deep black and luminous silver, the portrait is built entirely from chiaroscuro. Face and hands hold the light, sharply drawn against the dark, while the open collar and shoulders fall back into the same absolute black that surrounds him. What remains is presence distilled to essentials, charisma expressed through posture rather than performance, something quietly rebellious, almost sensual, in how little is asked to say so much.

No paint. No print. No ink. The image is formed by controlled scratches worked into the surface of acrylic glass, each mark a small act of removal rather than addition. The pompadour, the jaw, the grip on the microphone, all are drawn by what has been taken away, not what has been added.

The work is always present, visible without need for staged light. Light does not create the image here. It sharpens it. Under direct light the surface catches and reflects, the silver lifts from the black and the contrast deepens, gathering into skin, hair, shadow. It reads differently from different angles, moving between clarity and quiet without ever losing the image.

Seen from across a room, the portrait is monumental, an icon caught at full scale in a single held breath. Move closer and the picture opens into its own making, a field of controlled scratches, proof that everything here was carved rather than painted. Between those two distances sits the real subject of the piece, the private discipline behind a public detonation, the grip that comes just before the roar.

The Grip Before the Roar continues the Art with Scratch series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print. Part of a limited edition of 10, it asks what remains of a legend once the noise is stripped away and only the gesture is left. A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.

"Before the roar, there was only the grip."

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.