A Reach Toward the Green

A hand lifts from the dark, fingers open toward an apple that hangs just out of reach. Above it, caught in the same leaves, the head of a serpent leans down, tongue extended, watching the moment before it happens. The gesture is the oldest one there is, the instant before a choice is made, held still in a single frame of light.

Only the fingertips catch the light fully, along with the curve of the apple and the edge of what waits above it in the branch. Everything else, the wrist, the leaves, the long fall of shadow around them, stays dark and unlit. The image does not explain itself. It gives a hand, a fruit, a glance from above, and lets the space between them carry the weight of the story.

The surface is deep green coloured mirror glass, and the image is not applied onto it. It is scratched into it, formed through a field of individual marks that catch the light and let it go. No paint, no print. The image sits in the surface itself, present from every angle and visible even without direct light, though light will always sharpen what is already held in the glass.

Green is not a neutral choice here. It is the colour of the garden before the choice was made, of growth and temptation folded into the same breath, of leaf and branch and the cool underside of desire. The colour does not decorate the story, it is the ground the story stands on.

Because the piece is mirrored, the room enters it too. Whoever stands in front of this work sees their own reflection caught among the leaves, their own hand near that hand, their own shape pulled into the distance between the fruit and the mouth that waits above it. The viewer does not just look at the reach, for a moment they are part of it.

A Reach Toward the Green 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 hand remembers what the eye forgets."

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

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