Bound to the Black Tide

Andromeda stands chained to the rock, her pale form arched against a rising black tide. A single hard light falls from above, carving her figure out of a deep, pure black. There is no horizon here, no comfort, only the sea beneath her and the silence around her.

It is an old story: a woman offered up, bound where she cannot run, waiting for a fate she did not choose. Bound to the Black Tide holds that single moment before rescue or ruin, a body caught between surrender and resistance, between falling and holding still.

No paint. No print. No ink. The image is built through controlled scratches on acrylic glass, each line taken away rather than laid down. Nothing is applied onto the surface, the figure is drawn out of it.

The image is always present, in any light. Direct light does not create it, it sharpens it. The scratches catch and hold the light, the contrast deepens, and the black tide seems to gather weight. It reads differently from different angles, without ever losing the woman at its centre.

From across the room, Andromeda is whole, monumental, caught mid breath against the dark. Come closer and she opens into a field of fine, controlled scratches, small marks that only resolve back into her form once you step away again.

Bound to the Black Tide 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, here becoming chain and rock, skin and wave.

"Bound, but never broken."

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

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