Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Cluster Held in Green

A bunch of grapes hangs alone in the green, held by a single curling tendril and one leaf, with nothing to anchor it but its own weight. A Cluster Held in Green takes this small, familiar form and lifts it into something closer to a relic, a thing caught between ripeness and stillness, glowing at the edge of disappearing. The image is not painted or printed onto the surface. It is formed by removing the surface itself, a field of individual marks cut into deep green coloured mirror glass until the vine, the leaf and the curl of the tendril emerge as light where the material has been taken away. Up close the work is a field of fine scratches, a dense weave of lines across the leaf, a looser scatter tracing each round grape. Step back and the cluster resolves into one quiet, monumental shape, suspended in green. Green carries the meaning here. It is the colour of the vine before the fruit darkens, of growth held just before it turns toward wine, and the whole image now lives inside that colour instead of against it. The grapes sit as near black spheres within the green glass, each one rimmed with a thin line of caught light, so the fruit reads as volume and shadow at once, heavy and weightless together. The image is always present in the glass, with or without direct light. Light does not create it. It sharpens it, so that under a focused beam the scratches catch and the contrast deepens, and in softer light the cluster settles back into the green, present but quieter. What changes with the room is the reflection around the image, never the image itself. Because the surface is mirrored, the wall behind you, the room you stand in and your own reflection move across the green glass and settle around the grapes and between them. You are not looking at a fixed picture. You become part of what surrounds it, caught in the same deep green as the fruit. A Cluster Held in Green 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. "Held in green, the cluster waits between ripening and stillness." 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.

Estimate:£2,931.56

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