Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Cannon Exhales Doves

A field cannon stands levelled and ready, every strap and wheel spoke accounted for, the whole machine caught in the half second before firing. At the mouth of the barrel, where the charge should erupt into smoke, a burst of doves spills out instead, wings already spread, already rising into the dark.

No paint, no print, no ink. The cannon keeps its shape mostly as shadow, its wheels, its barrel, its carriage sunk back into the black, picked out only by a thin, nervous light along the rims and spokes, a field of fine scratches worked directly into the surface of the acrylic glass rather than applied onto it.

Stranger still is the ground it stands on. The shadow the cannon throws across the dirt is not dim at all, it is the brightest passage beneath the gun, a field of individual marks that catches more light than the weapon casting it, as if the ground itself remembers something the cannon has already let go of.

Above the barrel the birds take almost all the light left in the image. Wing by wing they resolve into the clearest shapes in the whole composition, climbing out of a machine built only to destroy and carrying what little brightness there is up and away from it.

A Cannon Exhales Doves belongs to No Man's Land, 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 asking what a weapon is for, once it has stopped being obeyed.

The image is always present, in daylight as much as under a single directed light. Light does not create it, it sharpens it, the spokes gaining a last hard edge and the doves a brief extra shine before the eye settles back into the dark. It reads differently from different angles, without ever losing the image.

Seen from across a room the work reads as one clean gesture, a cannon letting something go. Up close it is only a field of scratches, patient and exact, holding a contradiction that no battlefield ever resolved.

"Even the loudest machine can be made to exhale something gentle."

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.