Behind The Artworks: Abrasive Trees - Light Remaining (2026)

Grebo Gray discusses his creative process and reveals how this series of images came together before ultimately becoming the artwork for the album:

I am a British visual artist who has been living and working in Belgrade, Serbia, for the past 13 years. In the late 1980s, I studied for a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting at Portsmouth Polytechnic (UK).

Alongside the more traditional approach of drawing and painting, I now also work with digital photography and create digital artworks from my own photos and handmade painted textures.

The series of images currently being used by Abrasive Trees for their single releases and forthcoming album is from a photographic series which caught the eye of Matthew when I posted a few on social media.

When creating photos, I try to approach it in a similar way to painting, thinking about composition, texture and colour, rather than worrying about getting a technically perfect photo. It is more about the feeling of an image, and I try to be inventive in how I photograph things, which are usually everyday objects/scenes that people see every day but largely ignore.

In this case, I had some plastic screen protectors for mobile phones that I taped together and bent them so they would crack. I then photographed a variety of scenes and objects through the cracked plastic and simply adjusted the colours and contrast a little in Photoshop to create different moods.

On hearing the new album last year, I agreed with Matthew that they were a perfect fit for the wonderful music they had created.

Order The Album

The album is released on 29th May via the Abrasive Trees Bandcamp page: https://abrasivetrees.bandcamp.com/; via Argonauta Records: https://shop.argonautarecords.com/; and on your favourite streaming platforms.

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