Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - The Ears That Became a Bill

A single head turns left as a duck and right as a rabbit, and the switch happens without the image ever changing. Follow the bill and it resolves, a moment later, into a pair of long, alert ears. Follow the ears back down and they settle again into a closed, patient bill. Nothing on the surface moves, yet the reading does, over and over, for as long as you keep looking. Out of a deep black void, a field of fine scratches gathers into the curve of a skull, the line of an eye, the long shape that is at once a bill and a pair of ears. White exists only where the surface has been opened. Everywhere else the black stays untouched, and it is that untouched dark, as much as the light, that gives the head its edge and its quiet. No paint, no print, no ink. The image is built from controlled scratches across the acrylic glass, not applied onto the surface but taken from within it. The head is always present, in full room light and in shadow alike. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it, so the contrast deepens under a lamp and settles into something calmer in soft daylight, without the drawing ever leaving. The Ears That Became a Bill 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 holding two true readings inside one unchanging form. The duck and the rabbit sharing a single head is one of the oldest known tricks of perception, used for more than a century to show that seeing is a choice the mind keeps making rather than a fact the eye simply receives. Here it returns stripped down to a calm profile in the dark, asking only to be looked at twice. From across a room the head reads as one still silhouette, waiting quietly in its own darkness. Up close it opens into a field of individual scratches, each one catching the light from a single direction, before gathering again, from a few steps back, into the same patient animal it always was. "Two animals, one head, and the instant your eye decides which." 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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