Professor David Michie, 1928-2015

This obituary appeared in The Herald newspaper on Friday 4th September
The wee pastel drawing is a portrait of David Michie as a baby and is by his mother, the acclaimed Scottish artist, Anne Redpath. 

David Michie
Artist and teacher
Born: 30 November 1928
Died: 24 August 2015

Professor David Alan Redpath Michie, who has died at the age of 86, was a key figure in a small group of talented painters who emerged from Edinburgh College of Art in the aftermath of the Second World War. He was also an inspiring and much-admired teacher to generations of artists who trained at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen and Edinburgh College of Art from the late 1950s until 1990.
Professor Michie was the youngest of three sons born to the acclaimed painter, Anne Redpath, while she and her architect husband, James Michie, were living in the south of France. The older Michie boys were born in St Omer in the north of France.
The first six years of his life were idyllic, with the family living in the boathouse of the Chateau Gloria in St Jean Cap Ferrat. James Michie, was private architect to its wealthy American owner, Charles Thompson, at the time. Always a bright boy with a keen interest in nature, David walked along the Maurice Bouvier coastal path between St Jean and Beaulieu every day with his mother to accompany his older brothers to school.
In 1934, the family moved back to The Borders, where both James Michie and Anne Redpath had grown up. The Michies had a long association with the town of Hawick and the family settled there. Little David came home on his first day at primary school in Hawick full of stories; one of them being the fact that all his classmates were Italian. As Italian was the only foreign language he’d heard in France, he assumed those pupils speaking 'Hawick' were all Italian and that's why he could not understand them.
The young David sailed through primary school and became a successful student at Hawick High School, where he also played rugby and cricket. He was also an athlete of note, winning several medals for running. He was a keen Boy Scout and became a piper in the Scout Band. It was through the Scout movement he met and fell in love with Eileen, a fellow pupil at Hawick High School. The couple married in 1951 in the town of St Andrews, where Eileen had studied biochemistry at university.
Professor Michie absorbed much at the feet of his artist mother. Anne Redpath, who was from Galashiels, found much inspiration in landscape of her own childhood. Her sons were a constant source of inspiration and she painted many touching family portraits. In dire economic times, her husband moved to London in search of work, while she sold paintings to keep the family afloat.
At the age of 18, David Michie enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) but his time there was interrupted by National Service. From 1947 to 1949, he served in the Royal Artillery Signals Training Regiment; mostly in Wales.
He returned to ECA in 1949 and picked up his studies. There, alongside artists and lifelong friends, David McClure, John Houston and Elizabeth Blackadder, he studied under William Gillies. In 1954, he won a travelling scholarship to Italy, with Houston, an experience that he recalled with clarity and fondness all his life. They were joined by Houston’s future wife, Elizabeth Blackadder, towards the end of their stay in Italy.
By that stage, Professor Michie already had responsibilities in the shape of a growing family. The couple’s older daughter, Alison, was born in Edinburgh in February 1953 and a second daughter, Lindsey, arrived two years later in March 1955.
After attending Moray House, he taught at James Clarke's School in the Pleasance, which was followed by a spell at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen.
He returned to ECA to teach in 1961 and retired almost 30 years later, in 1990, as Head of School of Drawing and Painting, having served as Vice Principal from 1974-1977 and being made a Professor in 1988. In 2009, he received an Honorary Fellowship from the college.
Painter, Liz Knox, who studied under Professor Michie in the drawing and painting department in her final year at ECA in the early 1960s recalls him with much fondness. “David Michie was a kind, perceptive, inspiring man who knew his students and cared for them. When he came around for a studio chat, he usually said, “Have an Embassy!” This was always accepted, Embassy cigarettes were far superior to the mini floor sweeping cigarettes we normally smoked. David Michie was a witty and delightful man and knew how to give encouragement without imposing his own way of working, but allowed us to develop in our own particular directions.”
Professor Michie had a long association with The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh. Its director, Guy Peploe, describes his approach to life and work as ‘charm and professionalism personified’.
“David was one of favourite people,” he says. “He was very funny and had a wonderful sense of humour as well as an appreciation for the absurd, quirky and surprising in life and art. His own work was instantly recognisable for the nervous energy of his drawing and brilliant, jewel-like palette. He painted people at play, gardens, birds: from owls to anhinga and buildings (from all over the world), always from a surprising aspect. He was an inspiring and serious teacher remembered with great fondness by his students at Edinburgh College of Art.”
Even though he ‘retired’ in 1990, Professor Michie continued to live life to the full. Free to paint, his output was prolific. In 1991 his internationalism prompted the launch of a Summer School at the art college, which attracted students from all over the world to Edinburgh. Apart from painting, he had many interests. As a Borders man, rugby was a lifelong passion, as was jazz, gardening and cooking. According to his daughters, he took great pleasure in talking about all of those subjects with knowledge and at great length.
Predeceased by his wife, Eileen, in 2003, he went on to mark his 80th birthday with a major retrospective of his work at the Scottish Gallery in 2008. In 2012, the Scottish Gallery also held an exhibition of work by the Michie family, which included David, his mother and father and his brother Alastair, a successful artist and illustrator.
David Michie was bestowed with many honours. He was an Academician of the Royal Scottish Academy, a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was Emeritus Professor of Heriot Watt University and was made an OBE 1997.
He is survived by his daughters, Alison and Lindsey, son-in-law, Martin, grandchildren, Mark and Sally, Mark's wife, Paula, and a new baby great-grandson, Matthew.

By Jan Patience