One of my favourite authors is Elif Shafak. She writes glorious, poetic stories about everyday life and struggles, set mainly in the heat and light of Turkey. Her gift is making them relevant to everyone. Famously, she does this from her home in West London, whilst listening to loud heavy metal music.
Talking to artist Mackenzie Thorpe, at W Gallery last Saturday, he revealed a very similar method of working. I asked if he felt that moving away from his native Middlesbrough roots, or his previous home in North Yorkshire, had had any effect on his work. I’d been wondering if East Sussex had in any way influenced his colour palette or subject matter.
Not at all was the reply. He carries his art within him. All he needs is his studio and loud music to block the rest of the world out, in order to let his emotions flow into whichever medium he’s working in. He doesn’t have any preferences: he loves all music, each piece will trigger a different emotion.
And emotion is key to his work. He pulls off that rare trick of making something that looks so simple, actually stimulate very deep feelings. Like a writer who in one sentence has described your whole life, or a cartoonist who, with a couple of pencil marks, has summed up the state of the world.
Very often his subjects don’t have distinguishable features, enabling the viewer to see themselves in the painting. Or the purity and hope of a child gives the observer the permission to relive simple feelings. Clever titles also bring you back to your own life. The pastel of a couple looking into the distance is called Everyday’s a Sunday. Is that because they’re retired, on holiday, or because being together makes every day special? As you look at it, you’ll make that decision.
Art is obviously subjective. It often provokes very instinctive reactions. Mackenzie tells me about an epic charity road trip he made to Alice Springs. When he got to his destination, instead of the relief and adulation that should have come with achieving his goal, he was distracted by a painting. His eye had been drawn to a piece of Aboriginal art, made by an old man with a stick, in unusually muted colours, which spoke to him in a way that made distance and culture irrelevant.
Wendy Bowker, who recently moved her W Gallery to Lion Street, has known him and been a champion of his work for over twenty years. She says his life would make an arresting screenplay.
His creations are compulsions which come from deep inside his heart. As he puts it: “Pastel can’t walk and paper can’t draw itself.” That’s his job. His work is in the Royal Collection, cementing his importance in British culture and to the heritage of the nation. And we’re lucky enough to have him in Rye, on our doorstep, whenever we want. What an amazing town we live in.
Image Credits: Natasha Robinson .