A Coil Wrapped in Green

In the stillness of deep green mirror glass, a single moment holds its breath. A snake draws its coils around an apple hanging low on a branch, light catching only the curve of the fruit and the sheen of the scales wrapped around it, while the branch and the rest of the scene stay unlit, folded into the green.

Nothing here is painted or printed. The image is scratched into the surface of the coloured mirror glass, a field of individual marks that catches the light and gives the coiled form its glow, while the apple itself remains a dark shape held inside that light, withheld rather than shown.

Green is not a backdrop here, it is the colour of the story itself, the shade of growth and temptation both, of an orchard before anything was taken or given. It settles over the whole work like a held breath, steady, watchful, carrying old meaning without needing to explain it.

The image is always present in the surface, with or without direct light. Light does not create it, it sharpens it, under a stronger source the scratches catch and the contrast deepens, the coil and the fruit step further forward, but the picture itself never comes or goes.

Around the coiled shape, and in the dark passages between the marks, the room and whoever stands before it are drawn into the glass. The viewer is reflected inside the work, caught in the same green stillness as the snake and the apple, part of the story rather than apart from it.

Seen from across a room, the work reads as one monumental, glowing form against the green. Up close, that same form dissolves into a field of fine scratches, patient and exact, holding the image together only through their reach.

This piece 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.

"The apple glows. The snake holds it. The room holds you."

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

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