Cleopatra's Collar of Light

Out of a field of absolute black, a queen gathers herself from light. Cleopatra's Collar of Light does not paint her into being, it removes the darkness around her until she remains, held together by a field of individual marks worked into acrylic glass.

The collar is where the piece breathes. Bead by bead, it catches the most light of anything in the composition, a wide arc of fine scratches that reads as gold and stone from across a room and dissolves into pure texture up close. The cobra at her crown rises the same way, a shape built entirely from controlled surface damage, coiled and alert above a face that gives nothing away.

Her eyes are the quiet center of the work. Kohl lined, deep set, they stay in shadow even as everything around them, the tresses, the collar, the folds of her garment, moves toward brightness. It is a face built to be looked at, and one that looks back without revealing what it is thinking.

That tension between display and concealment is the real subject here. Cleopatra ruled by being seen, a queen whose power was staged in gold and kohl and ceremony, and whose history ends in disappearance rather than triumph. The piece keeps the ceremony and lets the rest sit in darkness, where it belongs.

Cleopatra's Collar of Light continues the Art with Scratch series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print. The image is scratched into the surface of the acrylic glass, not applied onto it, and it remains present whether the room is lit or dim. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it, deepening the contrast across the collar and drawing the cobra forward while her eyes stay exactly where she wants them, in shadow.

This work is unique.

"A queen built from what was taken away, not what was added."

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

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