Monoliths Pierced by Light opens onto a landscape built from silence and stone. Towering concrete forms rise out of a bare plain, their surfaces worn and grained, standing like the remnants of a civilization that trusted mass over ornament. There is no decoration here, only weight, edge, and shadow. Cut through each monolith is a circle, sometimes small and half hidden in shade, sometimes wide enough to hold its own sun. Light passes through these openings and settles on the ground beyond, so that even the heaviest forms in the composition seem to breathe. It is this quiet contradiction, mass pierced by void, that gives the work its title. Underfoot, a scatter of raw stone rests where it fell, and along the horizon a thin band of brightness separates ground from sky. The scene reads as both ruin and observatory, a place built to measure light rather than to keep it out. That idea carries directly into how the piece exists as an object. No paint. No print. No ink. The image is built into acrylic glass through controlled scratches, a field of controlled surface damage that removes material rather than adding it, so that the monoliths and their circular openings emerge the way they do in the desert, through absence, not accumulation. The image is always present, visible across a room even without direct light. Under a direct source the scratched surface catches and reflects, the contrast deepens, and the piece reads differently from one angle to the next without ever losing its form. Seen from a distance, the work holds together as a single monumental view. Close up, it dissolves into the fine lines that make it, a field of scratches standing in for stone, shadow, and sky. Monoliths Pierced by Light continues the Art with Scratch series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print. Read as a whole, the piece becomes a meditation on what structures let through and what they hold back, on how even the most closed forms carry an opening if the light is patient enough to find it. "Light does not create the image. It sharpens it." 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.