Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Hush Behind Antennae

A Hush Behind Antennae holds a single, suspended moment. A visitor from elsewhere lifts one hand toward her own mouth, eyes open too wide to blink, antennae raised like instruments still listening. Nothing here is caught mid sentence. It is caught mid silence.

No paint. No print. No ink. The figure is scratched into the surface of deep green coloured mirror glass, appearing through removal rather than addition. The bold contour of her skull, the ridge of her collar, the coarse field of dots gathered along her side, all of it is held by controlled scratches, a field of fine marks that catch the eye exactly where the surface has been taken away, not added to.

Green carries her. It is the colour of something not quite of this world, alert and cool, neither warning nor welcome. Against it, her form holds an otherness that black or grey mirror glass could not give her, a quiet reminder that she is seen through a colour that belongs to no one place.

From across a room she reads as a single graphic gesture, a face, a raised hand, a line of light cut from the dark. Step closer and that clarity gives way to a field of individual marks, each one part of the whole and none of them the whole by itself.

The mirror glass never lets the viewer stand outside the work. The room behind her, and the person looking, settle into the reflective ground around the figure, so that whoever approaches becomes part of the same quiet interior she seems to be watching. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it, the contrast deepening under a direct source while the picture itself never leaves the surface.

Her raised hand reads as a hush more than a greeting, a gesture that asks for stillness rather than announcing arrival. The wide, unblinking eyes suggest a being built for watching rather than speaking, present in the room without ever needing to explain herself. That tension, between an alien held rigid mid gesture and a viewer caught reflected beside her, is the quiet charge of the piece.

A Hush Behind Antennae 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.

"Some visitors announce themselves. Others simply ask you to be quiet, and look."

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.