Mackenzie Thorpe’s youth never seemed to hold out hope of any kind of life, let alone success. So desperate was his outlook as a teenager that he tried to end it all with an overdose.
But the British artist’s indomitable spirit has helped him become a worldwide phenomenon in the art world, despite a severe learning disability, a hardscrabble childhood and almost no encouragement of his talent.
As the 44-year-old artist explained to a class at Seaside’s Chartwell School, “All I could do was draw, and [everyone thought] that was useless.”
The gray-haired Thorpe, wearing blue jeans and a new white T-shirt, often had a twinkle in his eye as he urged the youngsters to keep drawing and never give up on their dreams. But he also revealed to them the physical and emotional pain he endured as an undiagnosed dyslexic.
Thorpe, whose work can now be found in hundreds of galleries worldwide, was recently acknowledged as Great Britain’s best-selling artist. His art resonates not only with such famous collectors as Elton John and Princess Anne, but also with ordinary people who see the hope and struggle contained within the whimsical, childlike images.
Thorpe’s remarkable life itself was one of the lessons for the youngsters at Chartwell, a school for learning-disabled or at-risk students. They also learned a bit about art and its symbolism along the way.
“I like to put something back,” said Thorpe, a plain-spoken man with a northern England accent. “I don’t just come to California, get my money and go home.”
Chartwell School was his final stop before returning to England and his home in northern Yorkshire. He had a busy tour through California — working with kids at the San Francisco Suicide Prevention Center and at a Community Partnership for Youth site at Manzanita School in Seaside — and attending a reception in his honor at Carmel’s Hanson Gallery. He readily admitted he’s anxious to get back to his wife and two teenaged children.
But helping children — however and wherever he can — is a deeply felt commitment.
He did that at Chartwell by telling them about his boyhood and the considerable obstacles he had to overcome.
“I couldn’t sit in exams. I could barely read and write,” said Thorpe, who is dyslexic. “The teachers beat me every day. They’d beat me and I’d pee, I was so afraid.”
The one thing Thorpe could do was draw, but no one valued that. The only relative who ever encouraged him at all was his uncle, who also protected Thorpe from the bullies that picked on him.
As a child, he spent all his time drawing. He’d take the paper out of cigarette packages, flatten it out and use that, since money for such luxuries wasn’t available.
At 15, Thorpe went to work in the only job he could find — as a shipyard laborer — but the job didn’t last. His suicide attempt came when he was 17.
It was during this period of confusion and despair that a friend suggested he apply to art school, something that seemed to be as a remote a possibility as going to the moon.
“My application form was terrible, the spelling was all wrong and it was clear enough that I couldn’t write essays,” Thorpe writes in the introduction to his soon-to-be-released book, “Mackenzie Thorpe: From The Heart.”
“But I had literally hundreds of drawings.”
The strength of his work got him accepted at the local art college, and after a few years there, to the Byam Shaw School in London.
Although art school gave him new confidence and opened his eyes to a universe of possibilities, he was years away from anything resembling success. He drew and painted while running an art supply store. About 10 years ago he sold one of his works. Then a few more. And a few more.
The first one sold for 25 pounds. Now, one of his paintings sells for $25,000.
“It’s taken me 44 years to get to this point, where someone likes what I do,” he said.
“I am living proof that anything is possible.”
But, he told the students, it takes continued hard work and passion to pursue such a dream. He urged them to keep drawing.
Thorpe also talked to them at length about the symbolism in his art and had them draw their own personal symbols, first an exercise in imagining the animal that lives inside them.
He also told them about picturing his own family as animals, which has been a springboard for the whimsical side of his work. He showed them images from his book: A square yellow horse is based on his Uncle Lawrence; two sheep in thick brambles are his wife and his daughter.
Thorpe also noted that he helped design several characters for the movie “Chicken Run,” basing Rocky the rooster on himself, and Rocky’s love interest, Ginger, on his wife.
The second drawing exercise, based on art therapy techniques, involved adults in the room as well as the kids.
After handing out paper and markers and asking everyone to draw a house, a cloud, a path and a number of other items, he revealed that each item symbolized something in the person’s life. The picture uncovered truths about the artist that even the artist might not know.
Thorpe remembered the first time he did this exercise: “I drew the sun [symbolizing father] going down, and the path [a symbol of the future] going to the back door of the house. In other words, I felt I had no future.”
For him, people like his Uncle Lawrence helped make the difference between hope and despair.
His uncle — the only one in the family who had a job at the time — bought him the supplies he needed to go to art college, an outlay of about $20. But to Thorpe, it meant the world.
“All kids need someone who can accept them for who they are,” said Thorpe. “It can even be a dog. Just someone to relate to in their lives.”
