At the disposal of owners of the most extreme and valuable Aston Martins, who may wish to commission unique collections of works distilling the beauty of their car into extraordinary pieces of art, Alan Thornton undertakes a very small number of commissions each year.
Format, size, media, the number of viewpoints to be captured and the print quantity of each, are all open for discussion. Each project is defined and quoted on an individual basis and Alan’s deep experience with portrait photography opens the door to the creation of large format prints capturing both car and driver together, a format with exciting potential.
Sandy Copeman, founder of Amalgam, on the artworks of Alan Thornton:
“Amalgam’s core mission has always been to capture iconic cars in supremely detailed large-scale models. When I met with Alan Thornton in 2020 it became clear to me very quickly that he was on a parallel mission to fully comprehend and capture iconic car designs and render them into perfectly worked 2D artworks. As with Amalgam’s models, Alan’s work exudes a passionate attention to the finest details, melded together to deliver a deep and powerful image of the subject car. Alan’s artistic comprehension of the car designer’s intentions, combined with his extreme technical virtuosity and a passion for the automotive subjects, results in very special artworks of great intensity and beauty.”
Virtuosity
“It’s a truism that the making of powerfully engaging art is founded on long, intense practice to develop effortless technique, enabling creativity to take flight.”
Photography
“Skilled technique and creativity are essential to every stage of Alan’s art. The first chapter of his creative process takes the real car into the studio, shooting it in high resolution, and taking infinite care with the lighting and angles. The outcome is a set of unique photographs of the car, specifically created to meet the technical and artistic disciplines of the next chapter in the story.”
Artistry
“The second stage of Alan’s process involves digitally working the image, breaking down the photographic image mechanically into numerous elements and complex dot patterns, that when printed will create the illusion of a full tonal range. Indeed, Alan’s masterful use of the demanding process he has created for himself, takes the artwork beyond photographic realism to produce hyper-real levels of intensity, depth and vibrancy in the final printed image.”
Craftsmanship
“The third and final stage is the printing of unique one-off prints and limited editions employing the traditional hand screen printing process or dye sublimation. In both cases rather than use a four-colour print process, the colours are defined and mixed to represent each element of the car’s paint and material finishes. The resulting print has colours of great purity and intensity. For the traditional screen prints the process demands much careful mixing of the inks and the hand pulling of each colour to manage the spread of the dots onto the paper and achieve the desired outcome.”
“Presenting these works in person to the lead designers at Aston Martin elicited an immediate and tremendously excited response, leading to a swift engagement and access to the most important classic and current cars representing Aston Martin’s design DNA.”
