Harry Grundy's new works on sandpaper are drawn at 3,000RPM

"The artist wanted to create drawings on sandpaper, so he took his supplies to an artist residency in New Hampshire, run by Bianca Roden, to spend the next two weeks "scratching away and finding a style that suited the specific material," he says. After a few fun discoveries and experiments, unveiling gloriously earthy palettes from rosewood, maple and olive wood on all kinds of grits, Harry began to explore drawing with larger machines last year."

"Treating belt sanders as his rotating canvases, the artist has created a range of drawings at 3,000rpm that look like sunsets, with soft gradients of colour that seep into one another. Other pieces have been made at a slower speed, over the course of a day and by hand in Harry's studio, many of which have taken on the appearance of textiles or sewing patterns."

"This loom-like motion drawing motion of pulling the wood back and forth across the paper to mark strong lines, "borrows something from the textile mills in West Yorkshire, near to where I sourced some of the additional wood", the artist says. The near two year long project has given Harry the joy of "creating something sensitive and slow from something biting and fast", he says."

""They say that some of the safest jobs in a post-AI world are the 'skilled trades' although I don't think this is exactly what they meant," he adds. This slow, manual making has had "a kind of liberating irrelevance" to it all, he says. A bit of a refuge from the world, the artist's studio has become - "a place where making a drawing with sandpaper is the most impor"

A project uses sandpaper and belt sanders as drawing surfaces to create artworks with earthy palettes and distinct textures. Supplies include unusual offcuts such as Japanese sheets with ceramic particles and Spanish paper with lettering visible through grit. At an artist residency in New Hampshire, experiments focus on finding styles suited to specific materials. Rosewood, maple, and olive wood produce color variations across different grits. Larger machines act as rotating canvases at high speed, creating sunset-like gradients, while slower, hand-driven processes over a day produce textile or sewing-pattern appearances. The motion of pulling wood back and forth creates strong lines with a loom-like effect. The work emphasizes skilled, manual making as a refuge and a counterpoint to fast, biting processes.

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