By the Head, 1980

Bob Smith (Robert Turnbull Haig Smith) was born in Dunfermline in 1938 and studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1957 and his career was both artist and educator. He married the painter, weaver, and potter Susan K Senior. After training at Moray House College of Education, Bob taught art for two years at Darroch Secondary School before being appointed in 1965 as lecturer in design at the Edinburgh College of Domestic Science.

In 1970, ECDS moved to a new campus on Corstorphine Hill and was soon renamed Queen Margaret College to reflect its expansion and the provision of a wide range of professional training and ultimately undergraduate level courses. Until retiring in 1993, Bob Smith played a key role in the institution’s rapid development, becoming in turn, head of the new departments of design, of drama and of communication studies. In 1982, he was appointed assistant principal. After retirement, he moved to Pitlochry and established a full-time studio. Smith enjoyed six solo exhibitions with The Gallery from 1969, his last, Of Quiet Places, was held in 1994.

The art historian Christopher Andreae wrote of Smith’s works: ‘These paintings seem to have emerged out of some sort of archaeology of the imagination, a dream dig. They are like the rediscovery, by means of scrupulous investigation – aided by small touches of sensitive restoration – of ancient wall surfaces, of long buried, much overlayered symbols of mankind’s primal concerns: earth and sky, sun and moon and tide, wave motion and pattern, growth and the cycles of nature, metamorphoses of seed into root, into stem, into leaf and into berry.’*

Public collections include: City Art Centre, Edinburgh; National Galleries of Scotland.

*Edited text from The Scotsman, Obituary, 2016