Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Echoes of Empire

Echoes of Empire

A Triptych from the Art with Scratch series

Panel I. Julius Caesar
Panel II. Marcus Aurelius
Panel III. Augustus

Three individual works. Each measuring 51 x 51 cm.

Transparent acrylic glass with controlled micro scratches. Mounted in front of a deep black backplate for contrast, depth and suspension.

Echoes of Empire was born from a fascination that has followed me for years.

Not only with Rome as history, but with Rome as something that never fully vanished.

The empire collapsed. Its armies disappeared. Its rulers turned to dust. Yet Rome remains. In architecture. In language. In law. In symbols of power. In the way authority still chooses to present itself. It survives not as a place, but as a presence. A memory embedded in the structure of the modern world.

This became the emotional foundation of the triptych.

Created during the earliest development of Art with Scratch, Echoes of Empire marks the first triptych within this new body of work. At that moment, I was searching for a visual language that did not feel drawn, painted or constructed. I wanted the image to feel uncovered. As if it had already existed inside the material, waiting for light to reveal it.

The portraits had to feel ancient.

Not recreated, but resurfaced.

As though they had spent centuries hidden in darkness, slowly returning through erosion, reflection and time.

The process became inseparable from the idea.

No paint is applied to the surface. No pigment. No print. The image is revealed entirely through controlled abrasion of transparent acrylic glass. Each panel is placed in front of a deep black backplate, creating contrast, depth and a quiet sense of suspension. The portraits do not sit on the surface. They appear to float within it.

Thousands of deliberate micro scratches build each face through pressure, rhythm and repetition. The surface is not decorated. It is altered. Wounded. Opened.

As light moves across the acrylic, the image continuously shifts between presence and disappearance. A face appears, dissolves, returns, and fades again. The work changes with every angle and every source of illumination, making it almost impossible to fully capture in a photograph.

This instability is essential.

Echoes of Empire is not a celebration of power. It is a reflection on what remains when power has disappeared.

Just as ancient Roman sculptures carry the scars of centuries, these portraits emerge through damage rather than perfection. The scratched acrylic begins to resemble weathered marble, fractured stone and surfaces slowly consumed by time. Light enters the abrasions like memory entering matter.

The image is never fixed.

Certain details come forward while others retreat into the blackness behind the glass. Faces drift between clarity and absence. Authority becomes fragile. Permanence becomes illusion. History becomes something incomplete, something still moving, something never entirely resolved.

Each figure represents a different state of power.

Julius Caesar carries ambition, tension and the violent force of ascension. His presence feels restless and fractured, as if instability already lives beneath the surface of command.

Augustus represents control, order and the desire for permanence. His portrait is calmer, almost sculptural, held in silence. Yet even within this balance, erosion has already begun.

Marcus Aurelius forms the emotional center of the triptych. His image carries reflection, fatigue and mortality. He does not represent conquest, but awareness. The quiet understanding that even the greatest empire in human history must eventually dissolve into memory, dust and fragments.

Together, the three works form a meditation on time.

Not on the dramatic fall of empire, but on the slower disappearance that follows. The transformation of dominance into mythology. Of authority into silence. Of presence into traces.

Scratched permanently into history.

This idea became the core of Art with Scratch.

Within this body of work, damage is no longer destruction. Abrasion becomes structure. Light becomes image. The surface becomes a carrier of memory. Every scratch contributes to the final presence of the work, while also revealing its vulnerability.

Echoes of Empire marks an important moment within TD Fine Art Studio. It is the point where material, light and erosion came together to form the foundation of a new artistic language.

A language in which images do not appear by being added.

They appear by being taken away.

About Art with Scratch

Art with Scratch is an artistic medium developed by Dutch contemporary artist Tijs Dragtsma, in which imagery emerges through controlled abrasion of acrylic glass.

Rather than applying pigment, the surface itself becomes the image. Thousands of deliberate micro interventions interact with reflection, depth and light, creating works that shift continuously depending on viewing angle and illumination.

The result exists somewhere between sculpture, drawing, photography and absence.

Art with Scratch explores erosion, perception, tension and the transformation of damage into image.

About the Artist. Tijs Dragtsma

Tijs Dragtsma is a Dutch contemporary artist and founder of TD Fine Art Studio.

His work focuses on developing new material based visual languages in which light, structure and physical intervention become the foundation of image making itself. Through collections such as Art with Nails and Art with Scratch, Dragtsma explores impact, absence, repetition and perception.

Since beginning his artistic practice in 2024, his works have entered private collections across Europe, Asia and the United States.