Formula One is more than just drivers and cars: it's also the mechanics, the media and the creative minds that bridge between the sport and its fans. Atlas F1 pays tribute to some of those professionals, as artist and illustrator Bruce Thomson writes about the best motorsports artists

As a genre, automotive artwork has exploded in the last 25 years. The burgeoning popularity of Formula One and motorsport in general has helped fuel this explosion, as has the fan's desire to identify with the sport and its personalities by the purchase of autographs, memorabilia and, of course, artwork. Despite the genre's ever increasing popularity, there are many who don't take automotive artwork seriously, feeling that it is not "true art" at all, but merely illustration. I'd rather not delve into a semantic argument about what the distinction between fine art and illustration is, but I will say that some of the criticism levelled at automotive art is merited.

Too often, one can see that an artist is relying upon a name or association to sell a print or painting, as opposed to relying upon the image itself. There is a long list of artists to whom this does not apply, and it is unfortunate that I don't have the time to mention them all. I have, however, chosen to write about two artists who both turn out consistently exceptional work, but who approach the work in a very different manner. The artists are Alfredo de la Maria and Thierry Thompson.

Alfredo de la Maria paints in a classical manner, with most of his paintings being done in, what today is probably the most time consuming and difficult manner possible: oil on canvas. The manner in which de la Maria paints is reflected in his subject matter and his painting style, with most of his paintings depicting pre-1960 subjects. His paintings have the vibrancy of colour and light that one associates with a good oil painting and the subjects - while highly detailed and realistic - are clearly drafted nonetheless. This painterly style is difficult to meld with the realism and tightness of line that drawing and painting automotive subjects require, yet de la Maria seems to do it effortlessly. Stylistically, de la Maria's work would have to be considered "old school" and the choice of painting automotive themes in this style has an intriguing effect.

What makes de la Maria's work stand out to me, though, is his composition. None of his work comes off as simple representations of cars - far from it. Each of his paintings seems to isolate a single moment, and interestingly, he doesn't have the need of a pivotal moment to make his paintings sing. What makes his paintings work is his attention to the painting as a whole; the painting is not of a car, it is of a race. What you will notice in Alfredo's works is a richness of subject matter that few artists attempt. The people in the crowds are real people, reacting to what they see on the track. The drivers in the cars are not just posing there, they are wrestling with their machines and each other.

Automotive artists work within the tight confines of the actual events, so the backdrop for the action on the track is set. De la Maria seems to be able to make his backgrounds work for him as few other artists can. When doing a painting of a race at Monaco, he uses perspective and viewpoint in a very effective manner, making the subjects spring to life from the canvas. There is a tension created between the richly detailed buildings and the snarling, smoking cars. In more pastoral settings de la Maria manages to highlight the speed and energy of his subjects by contrasting them with the bucolic backgrounds through which they raced.

Alfredo de la Maria has an amazingly confident style, and his paintings look effortless, although I'm sure that nothing could be farther from the truth. What makes his work really special, in my eyes, is his ability to blend a sort of nouveau-impressionism with dramatic realism. Each painting is a story unfolding before your eyes in a style that is instantly recognizable as his own - the style of a master at work.

Thierry Thompson's work couldn't be much more different from Alfredo de la Maria's. Where de la Maria works in oils and brushes, Thompson works in acrylics, gouache and airbrush; where de la Maria's work has an impressionist quality, Thompson's is hyper-realistic; and where de la Maria focuses on events, Thompson tends to focus on single cars. For many, Thompson's is the style that best defines the motorsport genre, and this is probably the reason that so many artists try for a sort of magic realism when pursuing this subject matter.

I was in an art store recently and saw a framed poster sized photograph of Mika Hakkinen in his McLaren alongside a framed Thompson painting of the same man in the same car. The painting was infinitely better than the photograph. It was not only the execution of the work that made it so, but the planning, the composition, the colouring, the attention to specific details, and the focus on certain key elements. The photographer is limited by his or her ability to shoot the car from limited angles with static backgrounds and unco-operative conditions. The artist has no such limiting factors, and when the subject is placed in the hands of Thierry Thompson, the results are usually spectacular.

Many people feel that high realism is a craft as opposed to an art - that is, that because one is merely recreating reality, one is not using one's artistic sense. This may be true of some painters of high realism, but it is not true of Thompson's work. His paintings are remarkably detailed and true to life with materials having such a life-like appearance that you want to try to reach out and touch the surface of the paper to make sure that they aren't real.

However, far from being just a clever rendering, Thompson's paintings highlight what the subjects actually are and, like de la Maria's work, they focus on the interaction between man and machine. When looking at one of his paintings, you can almost sense a latent energy in the paint or the paper, as though the car was going to explode off the picture plane and roar out of the gallery. Despite the fact that his work tends to focus purely on the car and driver at the expense of crowds, backgrounds, and architecture, his paintings still seem to capture a moment in time and transport it forward to us. In fact, his isolation of his subject matter from specific backgrounds (this is a generalization) focuses our attention on the subject matter in a way that would be difficult to emulate with a painting that has a richer content. Or, to put it another way; less is more.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about Thierry Thompson's work is that, though it has elements of photo realism to it, his work would be hard to mistake for a photograph. Real life just doesn't look as good as a Thompson painting.

Ultimately, I've written about these two artists because, for the meantime, they are amongst my favourite. What makes them so? Well, I have tried to explain it in the previous paragraphs, but ultimately, appreciation of any artwork comes down to the visceral reaction one gets (or does not get) when one views a painting or print. If I were asked to name my favourite automotive artists at this time next year, my answer might be completely different. There are a lot of automotive artists out there, and they produce an astonishing amount of good work.

Whenever I finish a painting, I put it away for a day or two and then come back to look at it critically. The most important question that I ask of myself at this time is "If I were not a fan of racing, would I think that this was a good painting?". It's a question that can serve the buyer of art well, too, and I think that if you have the time to look at some of Alfredo de la Maria's and Thierry Thompson's paintings, you might well agree with me and answer, "Yes".