Scotsman Obituaries: Diana Hope, artist and teacher who was a valued member of Scotland’s creative community

Diana Hope, who has died of cancer aged 78, was an artist, a much-loved art teacher and an active and hardworking member of Scotland’s creative community. She died as she had lived, surrounded by her large and loving family.

Di Hope was born in Aberdeen to George Mackie and Lindsay (nee Sharp). She was the middle child of three sisters. The Mackies were a large and sprawling farming family that thought highly of good wit and good storytelling.

The farm in Angus where Di and her sisters Jeannie and Lindsay grew up was a cheerful and lively place where Di was quick to make others, and herself, laugh. She also loved to be silly – throwing pancakes across rooms, pulling laden tablecloths from under set tables, feigning juggling abilities. She retained a streak of gleeful rebellion.

Diana Hope's paintings were about the inner world

Di was educated first at the local Kirriemuir primary school and then at St Leonards, a boarding school in St Andrews which was still run at that time on Edwardian lines. Di detested it but found an escape in the art department.

In 1964 she went to Edinburgh College of Art to study illustration and design. She met her husband, John Hope, an architect, there and they stayed married for 56 years, until her death. John and Di prized family life with their four daughters, Clementine, Sunnifa, Jessica and Arabella. These daughters have all had children of their own, and Di was a funny and generous Granny.

Her working life combined teaching and painting. After leaving college in 1968 she taught in primary schools in the Seventies, when some primary schools still had dedicated art teachers. She then taught at Broughton High School, and in 1988 went on to Edinburgh Academy, where she taught until 2005. Many students remember her particular fondness for the students who didn’t fit the typical student mould, and the art department became a refuge, as it often does.

Still life sets filled Di’s classroom, but she also stressed the basic importance to art of life drawing. She was an imaginative teacher and once read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials to a group of 13-year-old boys every lesson, while they made their own Daemons from Modrock and chicken wire.

Di Hope taught at a variety of other institutions, Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh College of Art summer schools, Leith School of Art and Fettes College. She had a studio in WASPS Patriothall for many years, and loved being in a thriving community of artists. She was President of Visual Arts Scotland and had a long relationship with the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh, which held nine shows over the years featuring her work.

Di was deeply moved by the art of Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse, among other artists ranging from Italian 14th-century masters to contemporary painters. She had a particular fondness for the colour blue, and it sang out in her paintings.

Di’s paintings were about the inner world, and the memory associated with domestic and personal objects, and her early work was about the magic imbued in these small items, the small witnesses. Later, her work became less about still lives, and more about secret inner landscapes, secret gardens, the tended life.

DI was a brilliantly busy person, mother to four girls, and a full-time art teacher, who also found time for a wide range of cultural work in Edinburgh.

She was a voracious reader, both of poetry and fiction. She chaired events from the 1990s to 2009 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, such as Scottish Writers for Breakfast, as well as many other interviews with both new and established authors.

Catherine Lockerbie, a former Director of the Festival, said: “I knew that any event that Di was chairing was in safe hands. She would greet often nervous authors with her lovely open smile and gentle, caring manner and simply put them at their ease. Her knowledge of their work was encyclopaedic, her curiosity boundless, her interviewing unfailingly interesting and perceptive. I knew that at the end of each of her events, both authors and audience would come out smiling and talking, eager for more.”

Di’s family loved her dearly and felt attentively looked after by her. She found a particular joy in celebrations – birthdays had their own beautiful rituals, which have been passed down to her grandchildren.

She had friendships that lasted more than 50 years, including a group of female friends who for 40 years met regularly for pot-luck dinners.

Di will be deeply missed by her sisters, her husband, children, grandchildren James, Georgie, Ava, Lachlan, Evie, Cleo and Cosmo, her wider family and her many friends.

Obituaries

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