Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Mouth Kept in Embers

Out of a darkness that gives nothing away, a mouth surfaces. The lower face is rendered with almost nothing: a curve of white skin, the black weight of parted lips, a suggestion of shadow where a jaw or a cheekbone might be. Everything inessential has been withheld, so the one detail left carries the whole portrait. Nothing here is applied onto the surface. Every mark that forms the lips, the light along the skin, the depth of the surrounding black, is a controlled scratch cut into coloured mirror glass, in a red so deep it reads almost as embers. There is no paint, no print, no ink; only the surface, worked until a face steps forward from within it. Red carries the title. A Mouth Kept in Embers names a heat that has not gone out, only banked, and the coloured glass beneath the black and white portrait holds that warmth the way ash holds a coal: present at every angle, never flaring, never cooling. Around the mouth, and in the untouched glass between each scratch, the room keeps showing itself. Whoever stands in front of this work is drawn into it, caught in the same red field that holds the face, so that looking becomes a kind of closeness the subject seems to invite and withhold at once. The mouth is present in any light, in full daylight or after the room has gone quiet. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it: under a stronger source the scratches catch and hold, the contrast deepens, the red glows harder around the black. What changes with the room is only the reflection, never the face itself. From across a room the mouth reads as one whole gesture, monumental in red, black and white. Close up it opens into a dense field of individual scratches, each a small, controlled decision, together holding a mouth that seems to keep its heat and its silence in equal measure. A Mouth Kept in Embers 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 fires are kept, not shown." About Art on Mirror – Red 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 red 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 red. 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 red 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. Red is the colour of blood, of fire and of everything we cannot stay calm about. 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.

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Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Mouth Kept in Embers

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