Three Faces, One Breath

Three Faces, One Breath holds a single woman caught in the instant her head begins to turn. One face stays sharp, present, fully formed. The other two trail beside it like an afterimage, close enough to still belong to her, faint enough to already be leaving.

No paint. No print. No ink. The image is scratched into the surface of the acrylic glass, built from a field of individual marks that thicken into the clear planes of a cheek, a brow, the steady line of a mouth, and thin into almost nothing where the ghost faces fall away. The likeness is formed entirely through controlled surface damage, removal standing in for every line a brush would normally add.

The image is always present, scratched into the surface of the acrylic glass rather than applied onto it. Light does not create this portrait, it sharpens it. Under a direct source the scratches catch and the contrast deepens, the sharp face stepping forward while the two echoes seem to settle further back into the dark. From another angle it reads more quietly, the three faces closer to merging into one.

That quiet shift is the subject as much as the woman herself. A single gesture, a single breath, is enough to split a face into presence and memory, the self you are right now beside the selves you were only a second ago. Seen from across a room the piece reads as one monumental portrait; up close it is nothing but a field of fine scratches, the same tension between unity and multiplicity written into how the image is made.

Three Faces, One Breath 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.

A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.

"One breath, three faces, and still only one woman."

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

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