Michie's painting derives from the tradition of the Edinburgh School - Redpath, Gillies, MacTaggart and Maxwell. Travel has provided the inspiration and subject-matter for many of his paintings, including Black Girls Walking in a Sunny Shower, Washington. Of his work he wrote in a letter to The Fleming Collection in 2002: "I was in a bus travelling from George Washington's house at Mount Vernon, passing along by the Potomac returning to Washington. This is an image I glimpsed which I found striking. I made a note and made the painting subsequently. I wished to retain the impression of something seen fleetingly so it is painted in a free manner. Another version, slightly larger, is in the Dundee Art Gallery and is not so freely painted."

David Michie OBE RSA, 1928-2015

The youngest of the three sons of Anne Redpath, David Michie was born in St Raphael in the South of France. He returned to Scotland with his mother and brothers in 1934 and was brought up in Hawick, Roxburghshire. His studies at Edinburgh College of Art from 1946 to 1953 were interrupted by two years' National Service in the Royal Artillery. The award of the college's Senior Travelling Scholarship allowed him to paint in Italy in 1953 for a year. Michie taught drawing and painting at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen from 1958 to 1962, when he joined the teaching staff of Edinburgh College of Art. He was Vice-Principal from 1974 to 1977, and Head of the School of Drawing and Painting from 1982 until his retirement in 1990. He held a Personal Chair at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh from 1988 until 1991, when he was created Professor Emeritus. He was then Visiting Professor to the Art Studio Department of the University of California in Santa Barbara.