Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - The Long Lie of Trump

A child who tells a lie and watches his nose grow is one of the oldest warnings ever given to a young listener, a way of making dishonesty visible before anyone could be talked out of noticing it. Here the same old device is borrowed for a grown man's face, and for once the fairy tale is allowed to take its full, uncomfortable shape instead of staying a figure of speech. In the finished work the likeness survives as a field of fine scratches worked into the acrylic glass, built up around the brow, the set of the eyes and the fall of the hair until the face reads at once and is unmistakably him. The eyes narrow into the one steady certainty in the piece, fixed straight ahead, and the furrow above them carries more of the expression than any single mark could on its own. Below that gaze the face gives up its detail far more easily. The jaw, the set mouth, the collar and tie are let go into the surrounding black, present only as a dim continuation of the man rather than a described feature, as if conviction lives entirely in the upper face and everything beneath it has already stopped arguing. Between the two, the nose is the part of the image that will not hold still. It runs long and pale across the dark, built from a dense weave of marks that catch more light than anything else in the piece, and at its very end those marks gather into one small, hard gleam, a bead of caught light sitting exactly where a drop of oil would sit. It reads as the one piece of evidence the face cannot take back. Oil is never an innocent detail in this series. It is the material behind every pipeline deal and every photographed handshake over a drilling contract, and placing one gathered drop of it at the tip of a lengthening nose lets two kinds of excess share a single point of light. The lie and the substance it tends to protect end up glinting from the same spot. The Long Lie of Trump belongs to Heads of State, 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 turning one moment from the news into a single image, a laugh first, and a longer look after it. Seen from across a room the portrait holds together like a photograph that has learned restraint, and up close it resolves into nothing but the marks themselves, a face that keeps its own damage where everyone can see it. "The nose grows. The gaze does not blink." 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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