Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Crowned and Forsaken

Crowned and Forsaken is a contemporary artwork about power, solitude and the weight a crown carries when there is no one left to witness it.

The king stands alone. No board. No opponent. No game unfolding around it. A single source of light falls from one side, sculpting the silhouette out of deep black. From a distance the figure reads as monumental, commanding the silence it inhabits. Step closer, and the surface becomes a field of controlled scratches on acrylic glass, the king seeming to dissolve back into the material it emerged from.

No paint. No print. No ink. The image appears through removal, through controlled surface damage that catches and releases light as the viewer moves, shifting the figure between clarity and near absence, between presence and void.

In chess, the king is both the most protected and the most constrained piece. The entire game is built around keeping it standing, yet it cannot move freely, cannot sacrifice itself, can only wait, hold its ground and carry the weight of the crown. That burden becomes the image itself here. Authority expressed through shadow. A silhouette that endures not through strength, but through stillness.

Crowned and Forsaken belongs to A Game of Chess, 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 speaking about power not as something claimed, but as something carried. Each piece in the series treats a chess figure as a symbol: the king as burden, the queen as force, the pawn as quiet sacrifice. Dark, minimal and cinematic, the works stand alone while belonging to one larger, silent story.

From afar, a single figure in a void. Up close, a visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.

"A king does not fall. It simply runs out of space."

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 thousands 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 is what gives this work its life. 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, recedes, almost disappears into the darkness from which it came. 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 retreats, leaving only a whisper of form. It is within that movement, between visibility and disappearance, 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.