Biography of Wendy

Wendy is a 61 year old Liverpudlian who has lived in Rye since in 2013.

She started off her career doing an interior design course but soon realised you need a lot of money to get into that world. Instead, at 21, she joining the Prison service and worked in a womens’ prison for 10 years. On promotion, she moved to a high security male prison which in hindsight was a mistake! There were very few female prison officers at the time and she found the working practises and culture shocking.

After getting out of male prisons she got more involved in NACRO (National Association of Care and Resettlement of Offenders) and ran mother and baby units in prisons.

From a personal perspective she was beginning to normalise the abuse, violence, anger and frustration of prison life and decided to leave the sector completely.

Once she left, she became technical advisor and storyline editor for a TV company on a show called Bad Girls (drama based in a womens’ prison) As she was able to work from home, she moved to Richmond in Yorkshire; she felt the need to live in a beautiful place

During this time a friend (who was also a globally renowned artist) asked her to running his gallery, dealing with the corporate and charitable side of art sales. When the artist, McKenzie Thorpe, moved to the south coast, Wendy followed

She moved to Rye in 2013, “another beautiful place to live” and Wendy wanted to be by the Sea. She continued worked for McKenzie Thorpe from home for the next 8 years, also travelling a lot for work

In 2021 she decided to set up and run her own contemporary art gallery in Rye, renting premises in East Street, and in 2022 moving to Lion Street. The W Gallery now features the work of McKenzie Thorpe and a female sculptor called Emma Rodgers who created the Cilla Black statue in the Cavern

In the near future she plans to feature a couple of other artists in the gallery including Johnny Vegas. She sells to clients all over the world and more to visitors to Rye than to locals

As an outsider (who sees herself as working class) Wendy has found Rye quite challenging with its old fashioned class system. She wanted to make art more assessable and has developed her own brand of gin to offer people who walk in off the street.

She wants her gallery to be different to the others in the town, she wants to be more inclusive. She has a large table in the middle of the gallery and encourages people to hold meetings there and product launches.  She would like to run something charitable for women artists from the gallery in 2024. 

She wants to get more involved in Rye life but knows as a “new girl” it needs to be one step at a time. She is contemplating setting up an arts trail and promoting a womens charity in Africa “so people don’t always defaulting to raising money for the Rye Food Bank”

Wendy is not an artist and feels she is able to offer advice on the future business side of things. The art business is changing very fast, more artists are starting to sell limited edition prints (large scale printing technology has improved enormously), artists can license their designs, they can exhibit in pop-up venues..”there are lots of new ways now of making money rather than just producing one off originals”.

Rye is starting to change “and it needs to” says Wendy. More new people are moving in and the town is becoming more cool and more inclusive, the new publication “Ryezine is really helping that!”

Audio of interview with Wendy