Michie, David Alan Redpath, Professor, OBE RSA RGI FRSA(Scot)
1928 – 2015
The youngest son of Anne Redpath RSA and the architect James Michie, Michie trained at Edinburgh College of Art from 1947 until 1953. He won a travelling scholarship in 1953 and travelled to Italy (1953-54) in company of his future wife Eileen and fellow ECA Scholarship winner and lifelong friend John Houston RSA (1930-2008) and in 1960 he won the RSA Guthrie Award. He lectured at Gray's School of Art from 1958 until 1962 thereafter joining the teaching staff at Edinburgh College of Art holding the post of Vice Principal between 1974 and 1977. In 1979 he was the Visiting Professor of Painting at the Belgrade Academy of Arts. He exhibited at the RSA from 1954. He became an Associate Member of the RSA in 1964 and a full Academician in 1972 and was the President of the Society of Scottish Artists from 1961 until 1963. In 1991 he was appointed to serve 5 years as a member (with responsibility for the interests of Scotland) of the Museums and Galleries Commission (MGC). He was appointed OBE in 1997. In notes delivered at a public address in 1982 prior to his being introduced for the post of Head of the School of Painting and Drawing at ECA (original in Michie Bequest Archives) he stated; "Regarding my own work, I don't really have a theory about painting, preferring to let ideas develop naturally from the basis of experience wherever that might come from. That in itself is a theory I suppose. To that extent most of my work is autobiographical and is akin to keeping a diary. Looking back over a number of years there are interests which I can find constant. I respond to things seen and enjoy being arrested by things banal and exotic equally. I like the triviality of ordinary things and the potential they have to become extraordinary and to mean something. While my work has been generally figurative I am not really interested in retaining the natural order of things - I enjoy the effect of apiece of colour or series of shapes and these have a freedom to determine what the picture is about. More than anything I like visual enthusiasm, I like an art which has a sense of optimism, but also I like art which disturbs, which has a hint of menace."
