Alan Thornhill was a British artist and sculptor whose long association with clay developed from pottery into sculpture. His output includes pottery, small and large scale sculptures, portrait heads, paintings and drawings. His evolved methods of working enabled the dispensing of the sculptural armature to allow improvisation, whilst his portraiture challenges notions of normality through rigorous observation.

Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen – but it is also related to both the old French word "emprouer" and the English "improve", to improve. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation.