F E AT U R E
Middlesbrough man: Mackenzie Thorpe’s
exhibition, Made in Teesside, is ongoing
at his Richmond gallery.
job and how can you ever get married and have
someone rely on you if you can’t provide for
them?”
It was a spell working in the town’s famed
Smith’s Dock that perhaps most inspires his work
but it was studying at Middlesbrough Art College
that changed the course of the young Mackenzie’s
life.
Did he enjoy it, I ask?
“It was the best thing in my life, I think about it
nearly every day,” he replies with typical turbo-
charged enthusiasm. “If you like swimming, well, I
was doing my kind of swimming – art - 24/7, every
second of the day. I loved every minute of it. I’d
arrive at six o’clock even though lessons didn’t start
till nine, and I’d stay till half past nine at night. The
teachers, Tom Wall and Ken Young, changed my
life because they had so much faith in me.”
Then came a big move to London to continue his
studies at an art college in the capital. You can take
the man out of Middlesbrough, but you can never
take Middlesbrough out of the man.
“Mam gave me a ten pound note and a corned
beef sandwich and off I went,” he recalls. “When
I got off the bus, I bought some eight-by-four
hardboard, nailed it to the wall and started to draw
the Teesside steelworks.
“I was laying down my identity. It was my way of
saying ‘This is where I come from and this is what
I do’. It’s what I continue to do every day. I’m very
comfortable drawing Middlesbrough.
“Working on Smith’s Dock when I was 17 or
18 had such a massive impact on me. I was only
there a year working with my dad and these hard-
case blokes but whatever it did, it did. Something
happened, I think maybe I passed over from being
a boy to a man.”
Forged from Teesside steel, it is perhaps no
surprise that Mackenzie does not talk anything like
a ‘typical’ artist.
He smiles when this is pointed out. “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.
“I don’t have an artist friend. I haven’t got the time
and patience for them. At the age of 15 I was working,
so I learned a worth ethic from a young age. I consider
myself an artist who just goes to work and does a job in
the same way a plasterer or brick layer does.”
But how does he marry such a working class
background with selling pieces of his art for thousands
of pounds, with even prints of his collections regularly
selling for four-figure fees?
“That knocks me out,” he admits. “I was in Stratford-
upon-Avon recently when a couple told me they had
90 pieces of my work. That’s what I can’t get over, that
someone wants to spend their hard-earned cash on my
work, from all the artists in the world.”
Having been given that cherished all-clear, after an
extended sabbatical Mackenzie is now regularly on his
global travels once again but he’s at his happiest when
alone in his studio.
He enthuses: “I’m lucky I can go somewhere and
be myself. There’s no place for worries, bills, politics,
religion or anything else in that room. I put pastel on
the paper – that’s all I’m there for. In the morning there’s
just a white piece of paper but in the afternoon there
will be a picture, and people will take it home and put in
on their wall.”
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