A Crown Kept in the Green

A frog prince, no larger than a secret, holds court on a single lily pad, wearing a tiny crown, floating in a silence of deep green coloured mirror glass.

The image is not added to the surface, it is taken from it. A field of individual marks forms the curve of the leaf, the small folded limbs and the thin bright line of the crown, while the rest of the frog stays a dark silhouette, cut out of the glass like a shadow that chose to remain.

From across the room the work reads as one quiet shape, a pale crown afloat on green water (paragraph 6: 'the green water beside his throne') Step closer and that shape resolves into a field of fine scratches, patient and exact, each one a small act of removal rather than addition.

Green carries the piece the way water carries a leaf. It is the colour of the pond this frog has made his kingdom, and the colour the mirror glass itself holds, so subject and surface share one quiet, royal tone.

Light does not create this image. It sharpens it. The crown and the rim of the leaf are always present, and under direct light the scratches catch and the contrast deepens, though the picture itself never changes.

Around the frog, in the untouched glass, the room keeps appearing: the wall behind you, the light above you, your own outline drifting into the dark water beside his throne. You are not only looking at the work, you are standing in its pond.

This work 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.

"A small king, kept by the dark, crowned by the light."

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

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