"Patience Wears Scales" begins with a single creature holding still. A chameleon grips a bare branch in a deep black void, its body curled inward, its tail wound tight, and one eye turned fully toward you. Nothing else survives in the frame, no leaves, no ground, no horizon, only the animal and the dark, and the quiet insistence of being watched back. Green carries the subject here. It is the colour of the chameleon's skin, the colour of its old trick of disappearing into the world around it, and in this work it refuses to hide anything. Cast into deep green coloured mirror glass, it becomes the colour of stillness held on purpose, of a creature that could vanish and chooses, instead, to stay in full view. Nothing here is painted onto the surface, nothing is printed across it. The chameleon, the branch, the single watching eye, all of it is drawn out of the coloured mirror glass through controlled scratches, a shape built by what has been taken away rather than by what has been added. Seen from across a room, the image reads whole and calm, an animal caught between breaths on its branch. Move closer and that same stillness resolves into a field of controlled surface damage, mark beside mark, none of them the picture on its own, all of them together holding the eye that holds you. Around and between those marks, the mirror keeps working. The room behind you, and your own outline, settle into the green glass alongside the chameleon, so that whoever stands in front of the piece is folded into it. You do not only look at the work, you appear inside it, sharing the dark with the creature that is already looking back. The chameleon never leaves. It holds its place in the glass in daylight and in shadow alike. Light does not create the image, it sharpens it, deepening the contrast along every scratch until the branch, the curled tail and that fixed eye come forward with more shine and more depth. Walk the room and the reflection around the work shifts. The image itself does not. "Patience Wears Scales" 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. "It does not hide. It has simply been waiting for you to notice how long it was already looking." About Art on Mirror – Green 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 green 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 green. 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 green 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. Green is the colour of growth, of forests and of things that keep returning. 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.