Another ‘Missing Child Portrait’ from , painted from the picture on a milk carton – a shocking image in itself on the most mundane of objects.

The title itself, ‘Missing Child Portrait 51’, suggests in a bleak way the emotional resonance of the piece. This child has no name. He is assigned a number that associates him only with other missing children. The child, the central, most important feature of the painting, is not there.

This particular offering from Mr Thornton has a deep emotional impact. The child is almost subsumed by the paint from which he is created – he emerges from it only as a blurred image. His eyes are hollow and unseeing, his head blends into a chaotic background that is resonant of the chaos that must follow the abduction of a child both in that child’s head, and in the minds of all those who care about him. He is off-centre, and with an off-centre gaze focussed not on the viewer, but on something invisible and unknown. There are suggestions of his appearance, of his age and clothing – but those suggestions are deceptive and uncertain. This might be any child, anywhere. Even the sex is not obvious, although the subject does look male.

The painting suggests that finding this child, in the maelstrom of emotion and confusion that surrounds him, would be a daunting task indeed. He is falling and blending into the paint that he is composed of, just as he may be blending seamlessly into the society where he resides, invisible to all attempts to rescue him.

There are, perhaps, more positive indications in the painting. The clearest feature of the child is his smile, in which his red top lip and white teeth shine through – one of the most endearing images of childhood. The colours in which he is painted are bright and vital, laid down with energy and passion. The fact that he seems to be straining to move forward out of the painting, to wrench himself from the background into which he blends, could be a positive indication of the child’s drive to regain the family that he has lost. But in the very struggling spirit of the child, hopelessness crashes through. His eyes are still empty. He is still enmeshed in the web of paint. He is still, after all, ‘Missing Child 51’.