Born in Saint-Raphaël, France in 1928, David Michie OBE RSA RGI was one of the most distinctive and life-affirming voices in post-war Scottish painting. The son of the celebrated painter Anne Redpath and architect James Michie, he spent his earliest years on the Côte d’Azur before the family returned to Scotland in 1934. The intense Mediterranean light, colour and atmosphere of his childhood remained deeply embedded in his imagination and would continue to resonate throughout his work for the rest of his life.
Michie studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the immediate post-war years alongside an exceptional generation of artists including John Houston, Elizabeth Blackadder and David McClure. Awarded the prestigious Travelling Scholarship in 1953, he travelled through Italy with Houston, absorbing the architecture, light and visual rhythms of southern Europe. Although closely associated with the Edinburgh School, Michie quickly developed a highly individual pictorial language distinguished by bold colour, flattened forms, decorative structure and a playful, lyrical response to the world around him. Critics frequently noted affinities with Matisse and Raoul Dufy, yet his paintings possess an unmistakably personal wit, warmth and humanity.
Throughout his career Michie painted not grand historical subjects but the poetry of ordinary life. Markets, gardens, umbrellas on beaches, birds, harbour scenes, jazz musicians, dancers, circus performers and fleeting moments observed while travelling became catalysts for exuberant compositions full of rhythm and delight.
Gardens became one of Michie’s most enduring subjects. A passionate gardener himself, he created richly layered paintings inspired by the exuberance of cultivated nature, often drawing upon the gardens of close friends John Houston and Elizabeth Blackadder as well as those encountered on travels abroad. His large-scale garden paintings are among the most ambitious works of his later career, weaving together plants, flowers, insects and architectural fragments into tapestry-like fields of colour and pattern.
Alongside his practice as a painter, Michie made a profound contribution to Scottish art education. After teaching at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, he joined Edinburgh College of Art in 1961, where he remained until his retirement in 1990, ultimately serving as Head of the School of Drawing and Painting. Generations of students remembered him as an inspirational, perceptive and deeply humane teacher who encouraged individuality while instilling a rigorous understanding of drawing, colour and composition. In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from Edinburgh College of Art in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the College and its students.
The Scottish Gallery played a central role in Michie’s exhibiting life over many decades. Emerging in the late 1950s as part of the second generation of artists associated with the Edinburgh School, Michie became one of the defining painters represented by The Gallery alongside contemporaries including John Houston, Joan Eardley, Robin Philipson and Elizabeth Blackadder. His long-standing relationship with The Scottish Gallery resulted in a series of important solo exhibitions which traced the development of his remarkable career and affirmed his position as one of Scotland’s most original painters.
Selected exhibitions with The Scottish Gallery include Paintings in 1980, a major solo exhibition in 1994, Paintings in 1998, David Michie: Paintings in 2003, Paintings from the Artist’s Studio in 2008, The Michie Family in 2012, Belgrade Prints in 2012, and the landmark Memorial Exhibition in 2017 celebrating the artist’s life and work. The Gallery has continued to work closely with the Michie Estate through exhibitions including David Michie Studio Insights in 2021 and The Early Years in 2023.
David Michie died in Edinburgh in 2015. Today his work is held in major public collections including the National Galleries of Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Glasgow Museums and Edinburgh College of Art. His paintings remain enduring celebrations of colour, observation and the richness of everyday experience: works filled with humour, intelligence and a profound sense of joy in looking at the world.
