His bronzes can be found in public spaces in London, including Highgate Cemetery and the Brompton Road. His paintings have been exhibited widely, most frequently with galleries in London and New York.[2]
His work has been featured in books, private collections, galleries, magazine covers, street lamp posts, school classrooms, cafés, women's safe houses, churches, prisons, hospital wards, and countless other public spaces around the world.[1] Mackesy was contacted by an editor who had seen his drawings on Instagram and subsequently published with her on Ebury Press.[4]
Mackesy was amongst the winners of the 2020 Nielsen Bestseller Awards,[7] with The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse achieving Platinum status. All titles that achieve Platinum status are inducted into the "21st century Hall of Fame", which now includes 149 titles. In 2020, eight books passed the Platinum Award million copy sales threshold.
In 2022 the BBC made a documentary about Mackesy, the book and the making of the film, titled Charlie Mackesy: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and Me. It featured contributions from Bear Grylls, who was a childhood friend of Mackesy's, Richard Curtis, Oprah Winfrey, J. J. Abrams and Tom Hollander.[11]
Mackesy’s paternal grandparents were Major General Pierse Joseph Mackesy and writer Leonora Mackesy (born 1902), who wrote Harlequin romances as Leonora Starr and Dorothy Rivers.