FEATURE
It’ s the inspiration behind the latest exhibition in his Richmond gallery, appropriately titled Made in Teesside, the walls brimming with art that can best be described as a homage to his hometown.
These days he lives in Hove on the south coast with wife Susan, a Park End lass he met in the bar at Teesside Polytechnic, but Mackenzie was born into a family living in a small two-up, two-down terraced house on St Paul’ s Road, off Union Street in the heart of Middlesbrough. Later his parents took their seven children to the new model estate of Beechwood.
A young life of real austerity helped form him into the man he is today.“ We had nothing,” he recalls.“ We didn’ t have holidays, we didn’ t have a car, we had no luxuries whatsoever. We had a poor life. I’ ve got nice cars and homes now, and I have holidays now and again, but the values I grew up with in Middlesbrough are the most valuable to me. That place keeps me who I am. It never left me.
“ I remember talking to someone at an art exhibition in New York and I told her my mam had nowt. She looked at me with a bemused look and said‘ Oh, is that like
“ I’ ve got no time for arty-farty types, I’ m the bloke from Middlesbrough, and no matter what I’ ve come across – the best restaurants, the most beautiful hotels or whatever- I’ m just the same.”
– MACKENZIE THORPE
Polio or something?’” By his own admission he sometimes struggled to fit in at school, struggling with a never-yet diagnosed dyslexia and leaving with no qualifications to his name but a burgeoning talent for art that hadn’ t always been appreciated by his elders.
“ School was really tough,” he admits.“ One day one of the nuns who ran the place said to me‘ If you were to die now, God wouldn’ t let you go to heaven.’ I believed the Bible 100 % back then, so this made me listen. She said‘ You’ ll never get married, you’ ll never get a job. Do you know why? Because all you do is draw. This is Middlesbrough. There’ s no time nor place for it here. If you don’ t learn something you won’ t be able to get a
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