Breaking the Blocks
Hi!
Thanks for stopping by! Life is tough, and I think this podcast might offer you some relief. My aim? To inspire you to overcome some of your own blocks through the inspirational, honest, and at times, downright raw conversations with some wonderful guests, not huge celebrities, regular people like you and I. Let’s see how they have overcome the difficulties in their lives and offer you some advice and more importantly hope.
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Breaking the Blocks
The Art of Resilience: Mackenzie Thorpe's Creative Journey
Mackenzie Thorpe shares his extraordinary journey from a dyslexic child in working-class Middlesbrough to a globally celebrated artist whose work touches hearts worldwide.
• Born with an innate urge to draw on anything available—stones, cigarette packets, fireplace ashes
• Struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia at school, describing himself as "word blind" rather than seeing jumbled letters
• Found escape through art, developing a three-dimensional thinking ability that compensated for traditional learning challenges
• Created his iconic square sheep series after a car accident in 1990, representing his family and his role as protector
• Gained international recognition when Salvador Dali's former manager discovered his work and introduced it to global audiences
• Balances creating joyful, whimsical art that's commercially successful while privately producing darker works that express his personal struggles
• Maintains a mission to encourage others to embrace their creativity despite obstacles or discouragement
• Met Queen Elizabeth II to present a commissioned Jubilee painting depicting the Northeast's resilience and celebration
• Lives by Van Gogh's motto: "If you can't go to work, go to work"
You can follow Mackenzie on Instagram: @artistmackenzie
His website is: www.mackenziethorpe.com
If you have enjoyed this podcast, please tell a friend about it, leave a review, or reach out to Rachel at breakingtheblocks.com if you're a business interested in sponsorship.
This is Breaking the Blocks and I'm your host, rachel Pearman.
Speaker 2:It's been carrying around for 54 years, this screen, and it's only getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the guy with it said what's it sound like? So I did it and the whole place stopped.
Speaker 1:So here on Breaking the Blocks, we're all about overcoming personal challenges so that we can improve and better our lives, but my artist that I interviewed today, mackenzie Thorpe, is actually a person who, yes, has overcome challenges in his life and improved his own life, but one of his main aims is that he wants to improve your life. He wants you to find the inner artist within yourself, he wants you to get creative and he wants you to overcome your own challenges and your own blocks, and he tries to encourage this through his art, through his gallery openings, through his books, through his talks, through his extensive travels, and he works with some amazing charities. So I was really keen to find out more about that work, but also about Mackenzie and the challenges he's faced in his own life. I am joined in the studio today by Mackenzie Thorpe. Thank you so much for joining me, mackenzie. It is lovely to see you outside of the Instagram bubble, which is where I came across you. So thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2:Thank you for asking me.
Speaker 1:It's a pleasure. You're welcome. The reason I brought you on the show, as you know obviously breaking the blocks. It's all about the things that we've overcome. And I came across you on Instagram and one of your lovely reels popped up where you just speak into the camera.
Speaker 1:You are who you are and you were talking about an experience at school and how, at school, you struggled because you were dyslexic and you were so into your art and you were told by an teacher that will get you nowhere. You know, you won't make a living out of this. You need to stop all of this. And then you were very adamant, obviously, that that was wrong. Clearly you are a world-renowned artist, so that was wrong from that teacher.
Speaker 1:But what came through that Instagram film for me is how encouraging you were of people trying to find their own inner artist and to be creative any way that they could. And obviously at Crafty Monkeys, that's what I'm trying to do with my ladies is trying to get them to find their inner sewing artist. So that's why I was sort of drawn to you. But I really wanted to get to know a lot more about you today and your journey and how you've got to where you've got to. So let's go back to those early days in the beginning, mackenzie, when you were a wee lad at school. You obviously were always crazy from the very beginning, weren't you?
Speaker 2:You obviously were always creative from the very beginning, weren't you? Yeah, I don't remember not drawing or making something. We used to get stones and draw on the pavement. I remember drawing in the ash in the fireplace, things like that. My granddad always had a pencil in his ear and it was a bricklayer, and so I'd have that and break down cigarette packets anything I could get hold of really and just draw.
Speaker 1:And was anybody in your family creative? I mean, obviously you mentioned Grandad with the pencil, but not an artist.
Speaker 2:My grandfather on my dad's side. He took up painting when he retired. He painted wildlife, he worked with Peter Scott and he learnt how to do that. Yeah. So when I was drawing they would just say like, oh, he's like his granddad, because I wasn't doing it for any reason, I just did it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I love that story of the ash Because I used to do the same. My grandma used to make a fire every morning, or every night rather, and then in the morning when I came down sometimes I would sit and play with the ash like that. So I absolutely am with you on that one. So that's yeah, that's lovely to hear actually. So it was always within you. And then obviously at school you were, you know, very creative but you were dyslexic. Now you've done so much, which we will talk later about dyslexia and helping children who are dyslexic, but I hope what my't mind me saying. Am I correct? Are you 69 now, mackenzie?
Speaker 2:I'm 69 in December 69 in December.
Speaker 1:So when you were at school, obviously dyslexia was not a thing, was it?
Speaker 2:It was like you're just yeah, you're lazy, you're stupid, you're thick. Sit at the back of the classroom or they'd take you out of the classroom, which is worse than that, because everybody knew why you were going out of the classroom because you can't read and then sit there and do cat on the mat and things like that. It's hard. You couldn't speak really because you just felt so, just so rubbish.
Speaker 1:What does it look like? Just a jumbled mass of letters.
Speaker 2:No, it's not, no, no, no, not with me. It's different for most people, you know, and there's also people who go oh, I like that, I can't see letters in my head. So I must have been 28, 29, when Susan, my wife, she said to me don't you see words, like I say, because don't you see? Because written? And I said no. So to me it was just a place of fog, right.
Speaker 2:And then learning mathematics, I couldn't remember the number before that I'm supposed to add up and what's this sum about? Which number should I put? So forget it. Keyboards I can't remember. Before keyboards, if I wanted something in a phone book under P I'd have to start at A and go through the whole alphabet and see the words changing at the top of the book. So to me it's like being word blind. It just doesn't exist in my head. I write poetry a lot, but when I'm writing, I'm drawing, I'm just mark making. It's difficult, and it's very difficult going to places like japan or russia or anywhere where the language is written on signposts and there's no clues. I don't know where I am. So there's no landmark and as I'm getting older it kind of frightens me a bit.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, Mackenzie, because you've lived with this condition all of your life, obviously. And yet why do you think it is that as you're getting older, it's frightening you I can't remember things.
Speaker 2:You know it's really hard for getting things like that, but lots of dyslexic people have a way out. They find something else to go to. And I thought everybody was like me at school in a playground because we lived in the same houses, nobody had a car, we never went on holiday. But I was in senior school and I did a drawing from where I was sat to the corner of the ceiling and I drew the kid in front of me from the back, looking from there. And so I thought everybody thought like that. So I think three-dimensionally. I direct my dreams. I can see around corners or pack in the car. I can see all the shapes and what will fit there and fit there. So I put myself in another world through the end of school by just drawing and going to that world. Then it nothing could really hurt me.
Speaker 2:When I got to work, I was a baker, foundry worker, worked on the river shipyards. I didn't like it because I had to do things that I didn't understand, you know, and the people would take the mickey out of me and smack me around the head. That was the little lad you know, 17. So I would go home and draw pictures and I looked at things as pictures. So the sunset going down, the sun shining and making shadows, watching movies, you know, seeing art. And so now, today, no matter what's happening in the world, no matter how inadequate I feel in that world, the outside world, when I walk through the doors of the studio, I go to my world. I a psychologist, a very big psychologist once, from Canada, and he said to me I don't understand how you go to the supermarket and do your shopping at the end of the day, how do you have this brain and then have this brain? Well, it's just the way I've taught myself to do it. My father's dead. If I want to contact him, I'll draw him. If I want the sun to shine, if I want to put four moons in the sky, I can do what I want. There's no ceiling. My heart is an adventure. To me, it's a journey and I've got a character that I use to a narrative in the work. That is the journey.
Speaker 2:And if you go back to my work at the beginning, like 35, 36 years ago, full-time professional, it's just grown and grown and grown and grown and got only the last three years, I've started drawing the journey of where, from real places where I go. The first one was a couple of years ago in new orleans and I've been up the bayou about seven times in a little boat and seeing the turtles, and one day I saw the silhouettes in the water, the reflections, and I thought I'll draw that. And then there's the boy. I brought him into the trees on the little grass islands with his heart next to him and so when it's in the gallery window in New Orleans, people walking past could recognise it. I was at Yosemite again and I thought, right, I'm going to do Yosemite. So I remember I got a little book and I did 36 drawings in about three days of Yosemite. We've been there many, many times and this time it really hit me. We were hundreds of feet up in the air and then there was hundreds of feet above us of mountains and we're going along the road to Tuhuga Pass and a car came round the corner onto the road that we were on and I saw a boy pulling a heart through Yosemite, taking love to Yosemite. So that's going to be part of that.
Speaker 2:Most of it is just from my mind and my heart and feelings. And people say where's that? Is that the Lake District? No, it's in there. And people say, where's that? Is that the Lake District? No, it's in there. It's a mixture of 68 years of living and seeing and watching, looking at the sky and using the sky like a piece of music. It sets a tone, a storm. Is that storm coming or is it going? And people have the argument in the galleries. One will say, oh, it's got to be alright, the storm's going. Oh, I think it's coming, pet, I think it's coming. So my art, it's just a. It's not some kind of dream, or oh, I want to be an artist, it's just some kind of dream, or oh, I want to be an artist. It's just my way of life and I'll be doing it no matter what. Once I looked at being a priest I thought, right, they'll leave me alone and I'll just draw pictures.
Speaker 1:That's why you're so prolific and that's why you tell such lovely stories. And, as you say, when you look at your art, I mean I was showing my husband today and I said, said oh, this is how I'm interviewing today. And I said, look at, you know, my husband's a graphic designer and so he was looking at your art and he said lots of things, you know, really lovely things. Uh, he felt like it was. He said he felt there was a kind of commercial, illustrative feeling to it. Um, but he said he was drawn to the sheep. He said the sheep have got such lovely characters about them. He said there's a lovely feeling about them. He said you can, that's what he said. He said he's getting feelings from looking at the pictures.
Speaker 1:And that's just what you said. This is your world. But that's because, from being a very small child, as you said, you had to inhabit a different world, because you didn't inhabit the world that everybody else inhabited. So it really is ingrained within you and that's why I think that you're so authentic and that's what came across on Instagram. This is not an artist trying to sell art and doing these little stories and holding his pictures up. This is you, mackenzie. This is your world that we are able to inhabit, so I think that's where that's all coming from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. When the sheep came about in 1990, I took my wife to work and I was driving back and it was snowing and icy in Yorkshire and I skid across the road and hit a tree, woke up in hospital Three days later. I walked out the hospital and I locked myself up in my studio Well, it was the gallery then. It was only 17 feet by 12 feet and I started drawing no painting with gouache Three sheep in a Yorkshire landscape. But the Yorkshire landscape was like Disneyland or the Wizard of Oz yeah, flowers everywhere, sun with beams shining everywhere and three smiley sheep, three different sizes. And then I started the second one. I started looking at it and listening to it, not just looking. And it said my head that's your wife, susan the mother, there's your son, that's your daughter. Your job is to provide a landscape like this for them to live in. And then, when you go home and there's no smile on their face, you have to do something about it. Right, it's your problem. Right, fix it. And that got me out of the depression of the accident.
Speaker 2:And then I just drew my. I drew, started to draw a square sheet. I'll do it on the screen, like that, a square. And I thought Mark Rothko. He painted these squares with colours around them. So I put the landscape of Yorkshire around it and what you draw on is your universe. And I filled the universe with the big square. And then I put Yorkshire, which is the biggest county in Britain. I put it really tiny at the bottom, I put a head on it, four legs, and said here I am, I'm bigger than Yorkshire, right? And we went down for dinner at my mum's that night and dad, and he said I was a going boy.
Speaker 2:And I said, dad, I think I've done something that I've never seen before and I'm going to keep on doing it. All right, boy, you keep on doing it All right, all right, all right, like that. And I did, and the whole world turned up. You know, it was just crazy. Yeah, I walk in with this bandage on my arm and in the co-op and a boy said to his man look, there's the square sheep man. And then that name stuck, you know. So the television came and the radio and all the rest of it, until there was a knock on the door, two men in Macs, and they'd just come from Chicago and they said we think you're the painter of hope and joy and love and we want to sign you up. I found out that the father and his father and son, he was the manager for Salvador Dali. So I thought that's good and so we did, and that's how I ended America and Japan and Australia, and it just went crazy.
Speaker 1:It's quite a story though, isn't it, mackenzie? Being this little boy at school who was quite ostracised and from a very working class background, and then now you've ended up sort of travelling the world and being this artist. When I came from my family with the kind of very working class roots and I wanted to be an actor, and I was quite ostracized because you know it was seen to be snobby and who do you think you are and I grew to be quite bitter for many years, and I've talked about this, so I've kind of healed myself, but I was, I was very bitter. I've talked about this, so I've kind of healed myself, but I was, I was very bitter, I was very angry inside. I was the kind of working class angry girl who felt like this massive Yorkshire chip on her shoulder. I always joke that I didn't have a chip on my shoulder. I had a fish and chip shop on my shoulder because I was so angry. So how did you defeat that demon? Because you had all the cards stacked against you, mackenzie.
Speaker 2:Everything was like water on a duck's back it hurt, but you learn to stop being hurt by building a suit of armour, so forth. I remember when I went to London to art school, my mum gave me a £10 note and a corned beef sandwich and I got the night bus. And when I got to London I went to college and I signed in and I started painting because that's what I'd come for. All I arrived with was a box, a suitcase, a briefcase. When I went to college in, my mum thought I should have a briefcase because I'm going to college, right, and I was the first person in our family's history to do that. And so I was painting. And a woman came up to me about half past four that day and she said were you sleeping tonight, mckennedy? I don't know, it was just. I don't even think that when I'm in this world. But I'll be honest even today.
Speaker 2:I was doing a show in Yorkshire last Saturday and some people come over from Middlesbrough and they'll say like, wow, you did it like this. And I remember them people and what they said and it quietly. It gives me a little bit like, well, there you, the boot's on the other foot, but I don't celebrate it or brag it or anything. I've been asked the question lots of times, you know, because people they did do stupid things or said things. My dad's reaction when I went to alcohol is oh my God, he's going to grow hair like a hippie, he'll be taking drugs and all that sort of stuff. So I was like the root in the litter. Nobody. I didn't even know where the art college was. I went to the pub, you know, in the shipyard. When I, when I went to college, she said you're right, you're not coming back in the pub, things like that. You know, it's just to be. I was being different and saying things that. What are you saying that for?
Speaker 1:but there must have been some dark times for you, mckenzie, in there, I mean, I know you're saying oh, it's water for ducks back, and now you can go with Na Na, na, na Na in a way, and in a way like you said it there much better. It must have been difficult for you. I'm reminded of the film Educating Rita. You know, when she sits in the pub and she says she's just like staring into space, julia Walters says I feel like I'm on a desert island by myself, and that was very difficult for her. So was there any of that with you?
Speaker 2:Because the world you inhabit is so different from the world where you came from. Yeah, I've had my moments. I was redundant, I couldn't pay my mum rent, I was ashamed, so like what's the point? Because I thought it's the end of the road. But then also now it's given me strength. That suit of armour is strong. So when people throw things at me I see it differently.
Speaker 2:I was invited to galleries in London because I saw my work. As soon as I opened my mouth I knew I wasn't getting anywhere. The BBC come and did a documentary about that on me because Middlesbrough got this big fancy art gallery and they won't show my work. So the BBC came down here and did an interview and looked at my work and things and my resume of all these I don't know, hundreds and hundreds of shows around the world. So he took that to the gallery and the director said through a letter, live on the television, you know kind of thing. He said we will never show mckenzie thorpe's work. That's it, and I don't give a hoot, nothing. But there's a lot of people in Middlesbrough who would like to see the middles of a boy done well in his own town and that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:Can I just go back to, as you call it there, mackenzie the dark side for a second. And you know from where we've been talking, where your art had always kind of saved you because you were able to inhabit the world. So obviously something happened there that you weren't able to escape into that world and you went into a very dark place. How long was that period of your life? I mean, was this something that just you know overcame you, or was this kind of a buildup of months and months, and did you stop drawing through that period or painting? Or was it just that you were still creating art but it just somehow wasn't reaching you inside?
Speaker 2:It's a continuous black cloud inside my head. It's always there. The depression, the happiest things, yes, yeah, you know, if I was left alone I'd be depressed and I'd just fade away. You have to control that as best you can.
Speaker 1:But where does that come from, that black cloud in your head?
Speaker 2:I don't know exactly, but I'm always striving for something and you fail. You think you fail. And Picasso said I feel like a donkey with a pole tied to my head, with a carrot on a string one meter away, and I'm trying to bite it, and I know I never will, but I won't stop trying to bite it. So sometimes I just wish I was a bricklayer or a plasterer, and then maybe I wouldn't think like this. And then when at that time you're in the pub, in the working club, you can't talk to anybody about that. They'll just think you're weird, so you just keep it to yourself. All right, poetry, have you seen this? You can't.
Speaker 2:You know, I got away with it at home because mum would give me a piece of paper. I'm the oldest of seven kids, so my mum would give me a piece of paper. I'm the oldest of seven kids, so my mummy would give me a piece of paper, kept me quiet and it just no. That's what kenzie does, you know. That's all it was. But of course I can. You know, I draw a big smiley face and my big headed children. And they're that big head because they're not born sexist or racist or homophobic, they're all born happy. So imagine my work with just a big head and some shoulders smiling the biggest thing in the universe but there's no houses, there's no food, there's no sky, there's no houses, there's no food, there's no sky, there's no rain.
Speaker 2:And when you point that out to people they go oh, we've all had it. We all go through it sooner or later at some time. You know you might be an executive or a big business, but the strain can get to you. You can say, jesus, I wish I was like that. So art does that. Because I've got this thing in my hand and there's me and the being and the pastel and the piece of paper. We're only here together so that I can draw, and the paper wants me to be drawn on it and the pastel wants me to use it. And so I go where the journey goes, and sometimes it's like dangerous it's, it's heavy that you're cutting over wounds. You're asking me questions that remind me of that day. So I have to relive it. I'm not frightened of the truth. I'm not trying to hide behind anything.
Speaker 1:I'm not that kind of broke are you able to now be open and have these discussions with your family, or do you feel like you have to protect people from that darkness that you have inside your head, because you mentioned when you came out of the car crash and the sheep became a thing and it was about right. Come on, get, get back up, protect your family, be happy for them. There's some kind of driving force inside of there, but I wondered, mackenzie, if you're able to ever give in to that and just let that out, or is that too dangerous a prospect?
Speaker 2:no, no, the kids grew up knowing everything about me and Owen works with us. He's been working with us for years and he works with me when we do podcasts or whatever it is, and I find it really difficult and I jump up and down. I want to smash a window. How many times we got to do this? You know, take this, take that I'm going.
Speaker 1:Oh god, all I wanted to do was draw pictures does he film the reels for you when you sort of turn around with your artwork? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so all I want to do was draw pictures? Does he film the reels for you when you sort?
Speaker 2:of turn around with your artwork. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so all I wanted to do was draw, and once it was only once a week we would do this for an hour. Now it's nearly every day. He's seen me naked, if you like, how I really am this other person, and so that's fine. We can all laugh and make a joke of it. Look at that again. He's noctious.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, mackenzie, you are a very successful artist and, as you say, there are people around the world who collect your art, know your art, want to come and see your art, want to come and see you. So why, if the social media frustrates you and you know you you say why do I have to do this again? Why do you do the social media?
Speaker 2:why? Why because I know there's people like me out there and they could be at our college or they could be anywhere and they're trying to achieve something. And lots of teachers and education people, professors, whatever have come up to me and said you doing a talk, they can see that if you can do it, they can do it. You know and I've seen that in the flesh, so I just know them. People are there.
Speaker 2:So if I'm saying like don't stop now because you think you've got it wrong, or somebody said, oh, that's a lot of rubbish, no, that's just their opinion. You might like curry, but they might hate it. It's yours, get on with it, and I just want to. Nobody should go through anything bad like that. Society should be or family should be aware of it and do something to help. Just support, not think he's odd or he's a mad enough case, because that's what I was called and that's what people thought of me. And all the accolades I'm a doctor and a professor been given, all that, all the accolades don't get through my suit of armour. You know, I'm just me. I haven't changed a bit. I've learned a lot. I'm more wiser than I used to be. I still get hurt and I still laugh a lot Like it's okay.
Speaker 1:So what you mean by that, mackenzie, is when you say they don't get through your suit of armour. What you mean is that you don't suddenly start to believe your own hype. When all these awards are bestowed upon you and all these things, you're still Mackenzie Thorpe. You're still the kid that was drawing in the ashes. You're still that person, even though people are going oh, you know, you're this amazing artist, so that's what you mean by breaking the art, you get that amazing artist thing.
Speaker 2:On Saturday, for instance, over 300 people right and I met them all. Kids showed me their pictures in the sketchbooks, people talking about their illnesses, the people who died whatever in their life was happening, and I don't see that as being a successful artist. I see that being among really nice people and everyone giving me a hug and a kiss. That's what it's like in the galleries where I go around the world.
Speaker 1:Let me just go back to the statement you made about the carrot always been in front and reaching for that carrot and you're probably never going to get it. So what is that carrot to you then, Mackenzie? What do you think you're always reaching for?
Speaker 2:I know I won't know until I get it, but I absolutely, 100% know that I won't ever get it. Yeah, and if I did get it, I was born with it and I forgot it, and that could be the reason why we strive to get it, because, whatever it was, it was so good that we want to keep on trying to get it.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting theory.
Speaker 2:I did a picture once called there's a man riding a bike to the council house and he went all the way around the world to find himself and it was right on the doorstep.
Speaker 1:We do go around the houses looking for something and then eventually realise that what we wanted or what we have is right there. Yeah, you've almost got it. Mackenzie, how good do you think you are as an artist?
Speaker 2:I'm the best at what I do because only I can do it. That's the answer to that question. It took me about 30, 40 years to figure it out. But yeah, that's what I tell myself. Nobody can draw my landscape. You can copy it, but you can't do an original. Lots of people do copy it, you know, but they'll never get there.
Speaker 1:You paint a lot about love and about joy and I think you're probably a very empathetic person because of all of your experiences you've been through. So I think you know you probably feel a lot about the world. So a lot of your work is so joyful, like, say, with the sheep and the boy with the heart. And looking through your work there joyful like I say, with the sheep and the boy with the heart and looking through your work there is a real feeling of love and family and joy and connection and happiness and a bit of fantasy land as well. As you say, it's like the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1:You know, lovely, but you have been in that dark side. You've been in that dark place that lives in your head. You've been in that dark place that lives in your head. Have you never wanted to express that through your art and kind of go more into the darker side of things and particularly in the world at the moment and what's happening? Because there's a lot of hate out there, there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of distress, there's a lot of social, there's a lot of social injustice. So have you ever wanted to go a different route and portray that?
Speaker 2:I've been doing it since the beginning. Galleries don't want to show it. It scares the galleries, right, big Ed's used to scare the galleries, big Ed's used to scare the galleries. My pictures of the hell that I did. I'll tell you one piece. Right, this will nail it.
Speaker 2:I was in New York doing a really big show and I had this man screaming. His mouth was this wide and it was like Francis Bacon was the kind of influence right. And this woman said to me there was lots of people all around. I said what's this about? I said it's a man screaming and she said why and what for? I said he's been carrying it around for 54 years, this screen, and it's only getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the guy with it said what's it sound like? So I did it and the whole place stopped. So that's in us all. We have to get rid of that and fill it with the other love, because if we don't have love, that's what the whole world will be like and that's why I did it and I do it nearly every week, every day of the week. When I'm in the house, when I go home, I draw till about nine o'clock and I throw bin liners out full of work, all ripped up. I'm surrounded by sketchbooks over the years and they're full of that.
Speaker 1:But that's very much part of you. Why don't we see that work? Because that piece to me sounds amazing and I would love to see that work Because, as you said, I think that was you in that picture.
Speaker 2:Everything you draw, everything an artist draws, is a self-portrait, right? So I am the sheep, I am the shepherd, I am the boy with the duffel coat, I am Yosemite, and I am this man as well. At college they thought I was a bit loony. In my second year I made a sculpture of a man and I put my clothes on him and he was kneeling down and I set fire to it and it was about the monks in the far East and Vietnam and all that kind of stuff. And so they got this psychiatrist and a dream therapist in to talk to me and that went nowhere. So they got an artist in, a really well-known artist, and I was painting away. And then you realize there's somebody standing behind you and he said McKenzie, if it wasn't for the dark angels, what would we have to paint?
Speaker 2:Literally, the galleries weren't short. People say, oh, they're more like museum pieces, you don't want to take them home, you just want to go and visit, right? And that's their excuses, I guess. And there's no way, there's no gate for me to get into the Royal Academy or this or that or the other to show them this work exists. One day, maybe they'll see it. I know it's good drawings and I notice people like you and other people you know. Know, when I meet famous people or dinner or whatever, they didn't come from riches, they came from the same place as I did. That's why they collect my work and they've seen some of it and I support the um men's suicide charity and they asked me to do something like that.
Speaker 2:I did one piece. It's called. No one to catch me. And you've got a shelf like that and then there's a boy standing on the edge of it and it was in the gallery and people were looking at it. Oh my, my God. And then you know like flies gather around it and they're going to put the red dot on. Well, now Susan, my wife, she walked up and took it off the wall and took it home.
Speaker 2:It's the only original in the house and because it's me, the other side of me, I haven't lost any of the pain and I don't want to. It's part of who I am and it keeps. As my grandma used to say, keep your feet on the floor, don't get too big for your boots. I remember them things, especially when I'm going into something that could drown me, it's so big. The event, event, you know, meeting the queen or whatever. I'm gonna go bloody. What are you wondering me for? Right, that's my feeling. You're like, oh, you know, um, so that's how I get through life. Um, there's things happen to me all the time in my mind and my nightmares, but they're they're great things to work with and I have access to over. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2:You start hundreds of galleries and I got rid of everybody. I left everybody and now we've got enough that I can handle. I don't want any more and I can make people happy. They come to exhibitions and is it all right if we laugh? Yeah, because that's really funny and then they start crying. You know, I touch people. The work does not me, the work touches people, and so if that's my job in life, then I'll get on with it do you think that heals something within you as well, when you're of course?
Speaker 2:yeah, yes, when somebody's telling you they've got cancer, it's terrible, or something like that, then you're right. I understand the feeling and it's in my work as well. You just got to see it who are you inspired by mackenzie?
Speaker 1:which artists do you really like, and are they sort of the classics, or are there any kind of new modern artists that you're enjoying looking at?
Speaker 2:no, there's no modern artists. Um, I love van gogh. Seeing the movie when I was a teenager made me realize I want to be like him. But my the best artist I think I ever lived was Mark Rothko and to my opinion he painted the Quran and the Bible all in one mark.
Speaker 2:There's no point painting. You see them and go like what's the point? They're abstract and they're just awesomely beautiful. They put a knife in you at the same time they put a flower in you. This big that's his temple in Houston, texas, and they commissioned him to put these big I don't know 15 feet paintings all the way around the temple and the only sound in the temple is a bell going dong right. And as the sun moves over the light, over this, the glass of the roof, different colors come out, the painting. And when you realize he knew he was doing that, he figured that out, he worked almost backwards to put that green behind that blue, behind that purple, and when the sun was in the right place it would come out. He's the best parent that ever lived for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about your Big Head series, because I did hear about this and I thought this was. I loved how you said it, so I'm not going to, I'm not going to say it, I'm going to let you say it because it's got a really nice story behind it. Well, I say it's a really nice story. It's actually from your son's struggles with dyslexia, but I loved what you said about our big heads that actually get smaller. So just give me that. Give me that little story, mackenzie actually get smaller. So just give me that little story, mackenzie.
Speaker 2:So that's how I did it. It gives me the opportunity to talk like that on my soapbox. Then, people, why do you do this? And I said, it's like a blank canvas and every child is not born French or German or democratic or Catholic and Jewish. They're just born and they can absorb anything. Oh, don't go play with him, so then they'll learn that lesson. Oh, you don't want a green hair, they'll learn that lesson. Oh, you don't want to fly in my crash. And they're not kids telling you that, they're the adults. You don't want to do that because and they keep you down, and they keep you down, and so by the time you're 50, your head's nothing and you can't even bother to get out of bed. You know?
Speaker 2:And sometimes I get angry and say I'm going to take it out the back and get rid of you, because you've had this chance to be born and that's all you've done with it. But you didn't make it happen. I was told I'm dyslexic, I was living a life normal, like the other kids. If I wasn't told I wouldn't have known. And when people know, then they start to change towards you. You're're labelled now A kid in the jungle playing in a puddle, naked. Somebody pulls up in a Jeep and says where's your clothes, you find out they were fine. That's how all babies are born, and then we go along and do all these other things, and I've talked in front of professors and politicians, educational politicians and the rest of it about it. We keep on doing it. I was saying yesterday it's 2025, all this technology and there's still kids leaving school who can't read and write. Are we doing it right? I don't think so. You know, it's thousands of years we've been on this planet and we're still not getting it right.
Speaker 1:It's wrong and so what do you think that we need to be doing?
Speaker 2:how do we?
Speaker 1:do it.
Speaker 2:Thinking of people. Thinking of people of the same, as you would, to Take it from the Bible. Think about others as you would yourself. Why hurt people? Why be greedy? Why do wrong to others? Wouldn't it be nice if we all just got on? You know, I worked with a unit once for teenage suicide in America, for teenage suicide in America, and that year they could have filled six jumbo jets with all the kids who attempted suicide. Some get through and do it and imagine what the whole of the family feels like, how they're affected. Like that I did a big other child once with one leg skipping because things happen to her in life, in war or whatever. And what does she do? She gets a piece of washing line and she starts skipping. You don't stop because of what people think about you. You don't stop because of how people think about you. You don't stop because of how you think about yourself.
Speaker 1:So how do we find that inner artist within ourselves? Then? Because this is something coming back full circle to the beginning interview On Instagram, you are very much telling people to find that inner artist. So what would you suggest to someone if they're listening now and thinking, I don't know, am I artistic, am I creative, how do I find it? What do I do?
Speaker 2:Everything that we do and think is creative. So the bank manager, the shipyard worker, the doctor, open heart surgery oh, I'll go around there and I'll do this, and it'll work. Creativity, right. Necessity makes you creative. Oh that, I'll go around there and I'll do this, and it'll work. Creativity, right. Necessity makes you creative. You find a way of doing it. So I don't. I'll say I was going to say I don't care what you do, but I do is if it's nasty, but if you want to do something, anything that you want to do and desire, and it's wholesome and good, if you just keep on going, you'll get there. You know, I said, um, if you hammer a nail hard and fast enough, it'll go in the wood. It might take you a long time, but you'll get there and you'll hang a picture on it. Right, you just got to keep on doing it, and I've been drawing for 68 years. If things like, so of course you'll get good at it singing, running, flying, all the people that do jobs outside that I don't even have to think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So basically, just start trying, keep going.
Speaker 2:don't listen to people and just find it within yourself before, like, oh, you're going to be this, all right, okay, I'll be that. Then, oh, you don't have to do that, george, don't worry about it. You know what about george, when george used to run around the supermarket in the playground pretending to ride a horse, you know? Or Mary, draw me a picture. Then she's your hour age. Mary, draw me a picture, right, I'll draw. Yeah, it's just sad, you know. Yeah, I want to be a mechanic. Well, why don't you want to be a mechanic for Ferrari? And you see kids' faces open up. Ooh, I could, couldn't? I Nobody's pointed that out to them. Yeah, you know. But they point out what they can't do.
Speaker 1:Do you see yourself at all as being spiritual? Do you think that when you were born into this world and you were there from tiny, tiny, tiny years picking up a pencil, do you feel like it was your mission? That was something that you had to do in this world, because you've helped so many people?
Speaker 2:No, I didn't, and I wasn't expecting to do anything that I've done like that Because, like I said, I'm a labourer. I figured it out a few years ago, maybe 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:It hit me and it's dead simple Pastel can't walk, so I'm here to pick up the pastel. Pastel can't draw without paper, so I put the piece of paper on the easel. All three of us are equal. None of us work without each other, and that's my place in life and that's why I was born. I'm no less important than the paper. I'm no more important than the paper, and that goes for my job. I'm just like a bricklayer or a plasterer who does a good job.
Speaker 1:Two things. What's there left for you to do? But also in your wildest dreams. If a dream of yours could come true, what would it be?
Speaker 2:The kids are happy, the kids are happy, the grandkids and my kids, son and daughter, and wife and husband. They have a good life. And I'm not going up a hill now. I'm 68. I'm going down the other side, so I'm trying to do my best to make that security happen.
Speaker 2:That's, you know, I made a sculpture once made out of hundreds and hundreds of rocks, and it starts off really really thin and goes up like that really wide, and there's a man stood on the top and he's made it. He's done everything, every single brick he laid, to get up there, and what he worries about is I missed his birthday. I was flying across the Atlantic for a meeting. I should have been there when she asked me to do that. You know a very famous pop star for a meeting. I should have been there when she asked me to do that. You know, a very famous pop star said to me once he invited me to a party and he said to me Mackenzie, when you get to the top, don't be on your own, because it's the most lonely place in the world. And I've kept that with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wonder why you're so selfless, mackenzie. I wonder why. I wonder what it is about you that you're so? Because you are, you're very selfless. It's like there. What's your biggest dream? Oh, it's about other people having a great time again. It's all the kids that you work with. I mean not in the same dream. What I mean is that it's always about the bringing people joy through your paintings, working with dyslexic children in Japan and across the country and across the world, helping those American teenagers who are facing suicide. It's always about other people. I wonder why you're so selfless.
Speaker 2:The smile on the face, the joy I knew the girl on Saturday once again at that show I met her in. She's autistic. I met her in a college where lots of them are autistic. Two days I was there. She went on a do degree. She's now an artist of herself and she's renting a unit in an old place in Middlesbrough and she got asked to do a show on Brick Lane in a gallery. She's 25, I think I was over the moon. The fact that I was a part of it, that's great. That's what I hoped for.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Can you just tell me what it was like meeting the Queen?
Speaker 2:Stockton Council wanted to celebrate the Jubilee and give the Queen a Mackenzie Thorpe painting. So I said, all right, okay, no problem, and we sorted everything out that we were going to do it. And then the next phone call was like from I don't know where, but it said you can't tell your mum or your father and you can't tell anybody about this day and you're going to meet the queen because you can't tell anybody. Okay, so I couldn't ring my mum and say, mum, mum, I couldn't do that. Then I did nine paintings till I was satisfied with it and I drew a crowd of people going through the snow, all ages, holding hands, and the fireworks are going off and there's bunting everywhere and they're all from the back walking into the town.
Speaker 2:And in the town of Stockton there's an old market square. I used to go there with my grandma shopping and that's right in the centre. They're all walking to the square. So that's the picture. So I go there with Susan. Susan couldn't come out this, this unit thing, a building. Only I could go out and I had a gold badge and I was stood in the grounds. And I was stood in the grounds of this place. It was a big water slide and canoeing and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And she got out of the car, this big car, the car was gorgeous. She gets out of the car with Philip and the guards and stuff. I'm standing there and she walked up and said what's the picture about? I said hello and she said hello. And she said what's the picture? And I said hello and she said hello. And she said what's the picture about mckenzie? And I said about all the years of poverty, hardship the northeast has had to go through. I said but forget about that. Today people are jumping up and down shouting and clapping and screaming. Philip put his hand in and said hello, mackenzie, like that. And then that kind of broke up the politics thing and then she said I presume it will be delivered. I said of course it will. And I said can I just say one thing? She said yes. I said thank you and she said you're welcome. And that was me and the Queen.
Speaker 1:I think she was an amazing human being, actually talking about being selfless. You know she had her. I know a lot of people say, oh, there are lots of opinions about the royals. But I tell you, when I watched the Crown I had so much respect for her actually because I know it's a dramatisation, but actually she has given her life for this. She did give her life and she wasn't expecting to, was she? That wasn't her position? No, so I do think she was an absolutely, you know, incredible person.
Speaker 2:Actually, I would love to, like everybody else. If you're recognized, like I say, you've got to do it. If you can recognise who you are, then it's easier to get on with it. And she knew that's what she had to do, and I know what I've got to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we human beings, we have potential to go to the moon and beyond, and if you can think it and dream it, you can do it. Otherwise you wouldn't have had the thought in the first place.
Speaker 1:Right, well, just two final questions, then. One is what has been your biggest achievement to date? What's the thing you are most proud of? I know you're going to say your family, aren't you? You're going to say your family.
Speaker 2:Well, it's more real than pictures. You can't eat pictures, you don't kiss them and hold them and run and look after them. Yeah, so I suppose it is Finding Susan, susan, finding me 46 years ago. There you go, that's the best.
Speaker 1:That's lovely. And the final question I always ask at the end of the interview, mckenzie, is if you have a motto. Is there any you know thing that like, do you have anything written above your studio door or just anything in your head? What is your motto for life?
Speaker 2:the one in in the studio is a card says I promise not to do big art again. Right, because when it comes to a show, you've got to hump all these things around. Now, if I did them this big, I'd put them in a suitcase. The motto that I have for myself is from Van Gogh if you can't go to work, go to work. That's it. Yeah, that's right. You can sit there procrastinating for the rest of your life, yeah yeah, well, listen.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for spending the time with me today, mackenzie. It's been nice to get to know the man behind the glass. Uh, keep turning those paintings around and uh, giving us your lovely thoughts, because you are inspiring to people and I, you know. I've watched a couple of your reels, I've listened to your words and gone. Do you know what? I'm going to give it another day? I'm going to try again today, and that's what it's about.
Speaker 2:So, thank you, for we get in response to some horrible I didn't know. It worked like that, you know, and then one story got 1.2 million people, you know. So I'll keep on doing it. So keep doing what you do, simple.
Speaker 1:If you have a friend who you think would enjoy listening to this podcast, would you mind please telling them about it?
Speaker 1:It helps me to spread the word and, you never know, they might get a life lesson out of it or, at the very least, just have a lovely 40 minutes of relaxing time for themselves. The second thing to say is that if you have enjoyed this, it would really help me if you would give me a little quick like or a comment, especially if you're listening on one of the podcast platforms. It just means that when anybody lands on the page, they can see that people have reviewed it, they've liked it, enjoyed it and got something out of it. So if you wouldn't mind leaving me a review, that would be amazing. And the final thing to say is that if you are a business and you're thinking how do I get my message out there, well, you could do it on this podcast. All you have to do is reach out to me, rachel, at breakingtheblockscom. The details are below in the box. Thank you so much to everybody for listening and enjoying and saying the lovely things that you're saying.
