Scrooge Crowned in Coin Light

Scrooge Crowned in Coin Light captures a familiar figure at the summit of everything he has ever wanted, and shows how little that summit gives back. He stands with his cane raised, his coat and hat traced in the faintest line of light, while the rest of him stays folded into the dark. The mountain beneath him is where the real glow lives, a field of individual marks scattered across acrylic glass, each one small, each one catching the light that his own silhouette keeps refusing.

This is the quiet irony at the heart of the image. The coins he built his life around now shine brighter than he does. His body is held in shadow, present but withdrawn, while the wealth around his feet blazes with fine, scattered brilliance. Power, once you reach the top of it, can look a great deal like isolation.

The image is not applied onto the surface of the acrylic glass, it is scratched into that same surface, through controlled surface damage rather than paint or print. No paint. No print. No ink. What you see is the result of removal, a field of fine scratches shaped into a duck, a cane, a hat, a mountain of coins, each mark placed to hold light rather than pigment.

From across the room the work reads as one clean, monumental gesture, a lone figure on a peak of his own making. Step closer and that certainty dissolves into texture, into a field of fine scratches that only resolves back into the image once you step away again. The work asks you to move, and rewards you for doing it.

The image is always present, with or without direct light. Light does not create it, it sharpens it, deepening the contrast between the dark folds of the figure and the glittering field beneath his feet. From another angle the same work reads differently, quieter or sharper, though the image itself never leaves.

Scrooge Crowned in Coin Light continues the Art with Scratch series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print. This work is unique.

"He stands on everything he owns, and still casts no light of his own."

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

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