Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Small Cat's Towering Shadow

In the corner of a lit room, an ordinary cat sits where the light falls, small and quiet in a field of fine scratches. Behind it, thrown high onto the wall, is the shadow of a lion mid roar, its mane spread wide, its mouth open in a sound that belongs to open country, not to a house. Look twice and the comparison does the work. The cat is just a cat, modest and composed, paws together, ears forward. Its shadow is not. Something in the angle of the light has let the small body cast the proportions of a much larger animal, and the two readings sit side by side without resolving, a pet in a sunbeam and a sovereign creature with a mane and a roar. The image is built the way every work in Art with Scratch is built, through removal rather than addition. A field of individual marks is worked into the surface of the acrylic glass until the lit floor and wall emerge as a plane of fine, cut light, and the cat and its towering shadow are left as the only places where the surface stays dark and whole, untouched. A Small Cat's Towering Shadow 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 asking which of two true things you are looking at, the modest animal in front of you or the enormous one it casts upon the wall. Seen from across a room, the work reads as one dramatic scene, a small creature dwarfed by its own myth. Come closer and the lion settles back into shadow, and the cat, calm and faintly amused, turns out to have known all along exactly how large it could look. The scratches hold their shape under any light, so the image is never hidden. Under a direct source the contrast deepens and the lion's roar gains weight, under soft light the scene settles into quiet, but the cat and its towering double are always there to be found. "A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure." 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.

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