Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Mind Scratched Into Stairways

A profile emerges from the black as a single pale line, forehead, nose, lips, chin, and inside that outline, where a mind should simply be, a structure of stairs, corridors and small doors climbs and turns and climbs again. One tiny figure stands at a lit threshold near the jaw, lamp raised, about to go on. No paint. No print. No ink. What you see is a field of individual marks worked into the surface of the acrylic glass, a field of fine scratches that catches light and holds it, step by step, landing by landing, until a staircase that could never be built stands there anyway. The architecture is the only part of this head that glows. The profile itself, the brow, the closed eye, the set of the mouth, stays dark, a silhouette cut whole out of the brightness it carries inside. The figure and its long shadow remain darker still, the one untouched shape moving through a skull made of light. The image is always present in the acrylic glass, in every hour and every light. Light does not create it, it sharpens it: under a direct source the stairwells deepen and the small doors seem to open further into the head, and from another angle the same structure settles, quieter, more like a thought remembered than a place seen. A Mind Scratched Into Stairways belongs to Look Twice, 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 following a mind that keeps climbing through a logic it will never resolve, and does not stop for that. From across a room the head reads as one calm silhouette with a maze for a mind. Standing close, that maze breaks into the controlled surface damage that built it, countless small cuts holding countless small stairs, none of them going anywhere a floor plan could explain. There is no despair in it, only the quiet, almost comic persistence of the figure with the lamp, still walking, still finding a next step. Perhaps that is what a mind does, climbing through rooms of itself that never quite resolve into one shape, and perhaps that is also, in its way, a kind of peace. "Every mind is a staircase that folds back on itself, and still, something in us keeps the lamp lit." 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.

Estimate:£2,957.92

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