The worldwide success of artist Mackenzie Thorpe owes much to the unsung role of his wife. PETER BARRON tells Susan’s story...
SUSAN Thorpe can afford to smile now as she remembers “the hard years” before her husband completed his journey from a Teesside shipyard worker to an artist whose work is admired worldwide.
Relaxing in a corner of Arthaus Gallery, a short walk from Richmond market square, Susan is surrounded by Mackenzie’s paintings of life and love, inspired by his tough upbringing in Middlesbrough.
The extraordinary rise from industrial Teesside to the world of international art is told beautifully in a new book, Mackenzie Thorpe With Love, a collection of anecdotes, artworks, and behind-the-scenes insights.
And, as she looks back, Susan admits to times when it was a struggle to make ends meet as the couple raised two children, while striving to turn his artistic talents into a livelihood.
“Who’d have thought we’d have got here from having nothing and dreading the bills coming through the letterbox? We sailed very close to the wind,” admits the former nurse.
Mackenzie’s rise from a dyslexic schoolboy, who found his way from Smith’s Dock, at South Bank, to a career as a much-loved artist, is well documented.
But the chapter that hasn’t been written is about Susan’s pivotal role in it all – the other side of the canvas. Mackenzie creates the magic to go in the frames, but Susan makes it all hang together as the business brain and organiser.
So, ahead of World Art Day on April 15, and coinciding with the publication of the new book, it’s time to tell Susan’s side of the story…
Susan Greenfield started life in Park End, Middlesbrough. Her dad, Kenneth, was a docker, her mum, Margaret, a housewife and former RAF hairdresser.
“We didn’t have much, but that was the same as everyone else, and I always felt loved,” she recalls.
At 16, she took a job as a clerical assistant with Middlesbrough Council, before spreading her wings at 18 by going to Germany with a friend to work at a swimming complex.
When she returned to England, she worked as a chambermaid at a hotel in London, before returning to Teesside after her dad suffered a fatal heart attack.
When she saw a newspaper advert, saying “Be A Nurse – A Nurse Cares” she thought “I can do that”. She started her training at North Ormesby Hospital in 1979 and began a nursing career that was to last for more than 20 years.
Susan first met the hirsute Mackenzie at The Rock Garden Nightclub, while he was at Middlesbrough College of Arts, having decided the shipyards weren’t for him.
When Mackenzie moved to London, to study at Byam Shaw School of Art, he’d hitchhike back to Teesside, to see Susan.
NHS rules meant Susan couldn’t move to London to continue her training unless she was married, so they agreed to take the plunge, with the wedding taking place at Middlesbrough Register Office at the end of 1979.
Surviving on Susan’s salary, the couple lived in a terraced house in East London, with Mackenzie taking a job organising arts and crafts in council play centres after he graduated in 1982.
The couple’s first child, Owen, was born in 1983, followed by Chloe two years later, and the job in play centres was a case of “needs must”.
As a child, Susan had enjoyed visits to Richmond with her parents, and always thought it would be a nice place to raise a family, so “a mad plan” was hatched – to move back north and open a gallery, selling art materials, in the North Yorkshire market town.
Without any market research, they set up Arthaus at 11 Finkle Street, then watched their high hopes fall flat.
A chapter in the new book puts it into perspective: “The business crashed almost from day one, and we were plunged into a couple of years of hell as we struggled to keep our heads above water.”
As well as juggling the demands of two young children in rented accommodation, Susan not only worked as a school nurse in Newton Aycliffe, but waitressed in a restaurant in Richmond, while Mackenzie cleaned tables to help pay the bills.
To make matters worse, Mackenzie crashed the family's old car on black ice: "I'd written off the car Susan needed to get to work, the very work that was keeping us afloat," recalls Mackenzie in the book.
Out of frustration and boredom, Mackenzie began using the art materials he was trying to sell: painting behind the counter in a shop with no customers. And when he put them in the window, they started to sell – for £10, £25, £50.
There was suddenly 'a light at the end of the tunnel' – and Susan pursued it. She went to a trade fair in Harrogate and came away with the first deal with a greetings card company, which loved Mackenzie's trademark square sheep.
A second deal with another greetings card company quickly followed.
Then, with the two kids in tow, Susan went into Dillons book store, in Darlington, thumbed through a copy of the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, and stumbled across the importance of licensing agents.
"Getting a licensing agent took Mackenzie's work to another level," she recalls.
Business was on the up, and was given a further crucial boost in the 1990s when Richmond's high-profile MP, William Hague, started using Mackenzie's work for his official Christmas card.
By 1999, Arthaus moved to a bigger site a few doors away, and continued to prosper.
An exhibition at Selfridges, in Oxford Street, followed, then America, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand – always with Susan arranging travel, accommodation, and gallery bookings.
With a team in place to run the thriving business in Richmond, the family was able to experience a move to California in 2001.
When they returned to England, and set up home in Brighton, Susan started a university course in retail marketing and business.
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Equipped with new knowledge, she was able to negotiate publishing deals, and generally take care of business, while Mackenzie did what he does best – create art.
"I just wanted him be able to paint because it mattered to him so much – and it's given us a wonderful life we couldn't have dreamed would be possible," she says.
And Mackenzie is the first to admit that such a life would have been out of his reach without her.
"After the shipyards, all I wanted was to escape through art, but it wouldn't have happened without Susan – my world would have fallen apart," he acknowledges.
"I haven't got a clue when it comes to business but Susan found the doors for me to walk through. We call my studio the engine room, and she's the skipper.
"As well as being so clever, so practical, and logical, we talk for hours about what's beyond Pluto. Our skills and personalities complement each other, it's been the perfect partnership."
Mackenzie may be the celebrated pastel artist, but Susan's the fixative.
