Daphne in the Green

Bernini's Daphne is one of the most quoted bodies in art history, carved in the instant between flight and transformation. This work does not repeat that moment in marble. It lets most of her go, keeping only what the light will hold: the curve of her spine, the raised arms, the first leaves breaking from her fingers.

The rest stays black, untouched, a void she seems to be running out of. What remains is built from a field of fine scratches, individual marks pressed into the surface rather than drawn or painted onto it, until a figure gathers out of nothing but accumulated light.

Green carries the subject here. It is the colour of laurel, of the tree Daphne becomes rather than the woman she was escaping, and it settles the whole scene into the hush of a myth still mid breath, still becoming, neither fully human nor fully leaf.

The work is shaped in deep green coloured mirror glass. Around the figure, in the dark ground that holds her, the room and whoever stands in front of it are returned in reflection, so looking at Daphne also means seeing yourself caught in her clearing.

Light does not create her. It sharpens what is already there. From a distance she reads as a single luminous gesture; up close she dissolves into the controlled surface damage that formed her, mark by mark.

"Daphne in 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. This work is unique.

"Even mid flight, she is already becoming something that cannot be caught."

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

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