A Chair Beneath the Moon

A single chair stands on an expanse of dark, textured ground, beneath a moon so large it seems to hang just above the seat like a held breath. The scale is deliberate, one small and ordinary object measured against something vast and luminous, and in that measuring, a quiet story of solitude begins to unfold.

The chair waits. It does not reach for the moon, it does not need to. It simply holds its place in a night that could otherwise swallow it whole, upright and modest beneath all that pale weight. There is something tender in that stillness, the way one empty seat can carry both absence and presence at the same time.

No paint. No print. No ink. The moon and the ground around it are built through controlled scratches worked into the acrylic glass, controlled surface damage rather than colour laid on top. The image is not applied onto the surface, it is drawn out of the surface itself, each mark catching light differently from the plane around it.

The work is always present, visible even in soft, ambient light. Direct light does not summon the moon from nothing, it sharpens what is already there, deepening the contrast between that glowing sphere and the darkness pressing in around it. It reads differently from different angles, the surface shifting between quiet and shine, without ever losing its shape.

Seen from across a room, it reads as one monumental gesture, a private moon suspended over an empty chair. Move closer and that smooth glow resolves into a fine, worked field of controlled scratches, each one part of a single calm form.

Beneath that surface is a quieter idea, about smallness held with dignity, about how one modest chair beneath an impossible moon can stand in for anyone who has ever felt dwarfed by something larger than themselves, and chosen to stay anyway.

This work continues the Art with Scratch series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print. A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.

"Even beneath the largest moon, the chair still holds its ground."

More about the artist, process and materials can be found on the About page.

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