{"product_id":"venus-risen-from-black-water","title":"Venus Risen From Black Water","description":"\u003cp\u003eVenus Risen From Black Water is after The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, the painting completed in the 1480s and still standing in the Uffizi in Florence. The goddess keeps the pose that generations already know by heart, the scallop shell beneath her feet, the hair lifted sideways by a wind that will not stop, one hand drawn modestly across her chest. What she surrenders is the colour, the pale tempera sky, the gold that made this one of the most recognised images Western painting ever produced. This is an independent work by Tijs Dragtsma, a new interpretation in scratches and not a copy, reproduction or print of Botticelli's painting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat remains here is built from a field of individual marks, each one scratched into the surface of the acrylic glass rather than laid on top of it. Her face and torso gather the most light and hold together as a single calm plane, the surest part of the whole composition. The shell beneath her opens like a second source of light, its ribs catching the surface in long radiating lines, so that goddess and shell seem to be made of the same bright material. Her hair, so famous for its motion, survives only as a handful of restless lines streaming off into the dark, and her hands and feet are kept just long enough to read before they dissolve back into black.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEverything else, the sea Botticelli painted turquoise, the breath of the wind god, the attendant waiting with a cloak, is given up entirely and kept only as the shape of what is missing. The water Venus was born from here becomes a true black, total and without horizon, so that she seems to rise not out of foam but out of the dark itself. Seen from a distance the figure reads as one monumental shape of light against that black. Up close it breaks apart into the field of fine scratches that built it, and the two readings never fully agree with each other, which is part of what holds the eye.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBotticelli painted a birth. This version asks what a birth looks like with the colour, the myth's gentle apparatus, stripped away, leaving only the moment a figure separates herself from the dark and becomes visible. That is also, in its own way, how the work itself takes shape, a form built by what is taken from the surface rather than by what is added to it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVenus Risen From Black Water belongs to After the Masters, a series within Art with Scratch by Tijs Dragtsma in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print, and in which that same damage becomes a way of asking how little of a masterpiece needs to survive before the eye completes the rest.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe image does not need light to be seen. It is always present, scratched into the surface of the acrylic glass. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it, so the shell's ribs gain depth and the contrast across her body deepens, and the work reads differently depending on where you stand without ever losing the figure at its centre.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A goddess built from what the surface gives up, not from what is placed on it.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore about the artist, process and materials can be found on the About page.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eQuestions about this work, availability or shipping can be sent through the contact page.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TD Fine Art Studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":59807497093445,"sku":null,"price":4500.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0904\/0724\/0005\/files\/Venus_Risen_From_Black_Water_thumbnail.jpg?v=1792415045","url":"https:\/\/tdfineartstudio.com\/products\/venus-risen-from-black-water","provider":"TD Fine Art Studio","version":"1.0","type":"link"}