Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Stairways Crossing Into Light

Six arched doorways hang in the black, each one a pool of white light that seems to have been scratched straight out of the dark. Between them, staircases cross at angles that answer to no single floor, diagonal fields of fine scratches rising and falling without ever agreeing on which way is down. Nothing in this architecture holds still long enough to be trusted, and nothing here needs to.

Stairways Crossing Into Light is a tribute to Relativity, the lithograph in which M. C. Escher built a world of staircases obeying several gravities at once, each inhabited by figures walking calmly through directions that cannot coexist in any real room. This is an independent and unique work by Tijs Dragtsma, not a copy, a reproduction, a print or an edition of Escher's lithograph, and not made, authorised, endorsed or licensed by his estate or any foundation that carries his name.

Escher filled his staircases with houses, gardens and a crowd going about an ordinary day inside an impossible structure, each figure certain of their own floor and blind to everyone else's. This answer keeps only the skeleton of that idea: the doorways, the paths that climb toward them, and the quiet certainty of the people walking through.

Every staircase here is drawn as a field of fine scratches, caught mid crossing, so that the architecture reads as light rather than stone. The doorways are the brightest passages in the frame, each one scratched until it glows like an opening cut clean through the black. Only the figures stay dark, solid silhouettes holding their footing on a structure that offers them none, each one walking toward their own doorway as if it were the only direction that made sense.

No paint. No print. No ink. The image is scratched into the surface of the acrylic glass, present whether the room is lit or not. Light does not create the image, it sharpens it: under a direct source the staircases catch and the contrast deepens, and the work reads differently depending on where you stand without ever losing its shape.

Stairways Crossing Into Light belongs to In Tribute, 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 answering the gestures that shaped how we see, one work at a time.

A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.

"Every staircase leads somewhere. None of them agree on where."

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.

This listing contains AI-generated visualisations. Please refer to the original photographs to assess the actual condition of the object.