Alan Thornton is an artist who focuses on translating his original photography through the medium of screen printing to create limited edition prints. Alan has been developing his approach as an image-maker, photographer and filmmaker for over 30 years and is constantly developing new ideas and approaches.
Alan’s journey to screen printing started in his early teens when he first took an interest in photography and threw himself into the darkroom where he embraced the opportunity to physically manipulate and enhance prints.
Having graduated with a first from Salisbury College of Art, Alan was a very early adopter and innovator of digital tools and techniques, applying these to both still and moving images. His work is informed by a range of creative influences drawn from the painting, filmmaking, art, and music, combined with his early traditional darkroom influences.
Growing tired of the ease and endless possibilities of digital capture, manipulation and printing, Alan began to search for a medium that enabled him to synthesize the techniques he had developed, while bringing focus to his work. An epithany came with the realisation that screen printing facilitated the perfect marriage of his ideas, skills and techniques.
Alan’s early screen prints exposed his underlying obsession with industrial design and function, and the relationships we all have with inanimate objects.
Having worked with the medium of photography extensively for many decades, he reflected on the intimate relationship people can develop with their cameras – the feel, the textures, the details. His use of screen printing brings to life the tools of photography in his first major body of work. The attention to detail Alan brought to these ‘photographic’ prints extended to the use of metallic silver inks to add depth but also in a reference to the underlying technology of analogue photography – silver halide.
His obsession with form, function and beauty has now led him to work with another long term passion – cars. Almost technical in nature, these prints isolate the cars on his signature, metallic background that focuses the viewer’s eye on the sculptural, almost organic qualities of some of the most iconic cars from the history of automotive design.
Alan is based in Spitalfields East London, and devotes his time to using photography, image making, and screen printing to explore and express his creative ideas.