My friend Elspeth Weir, who has died aged 82, was a painter and a highly creative person who exercised a lasting influence over many of her friends.
She was born in London to Scots parents, Jean (nee Fairlie), a housewife, and William Weir, a GP and former surgeon in the Royal Navy), and was educated at the independent Channing school for girls in Highgate. She then received a national diploma in design in fine art at the Hornsey School of Art.
For a decade from the early 1960s she worked as an art therapist at the Halliwick psychiatric hospital in Friern Barnet, north London, as well as at the Friday Club at St George’s hospital, at the old site in Knightsbridge and in Tooting, alongside the consultant psychotherapist Patrick de Maré, who had a special interest in group psychotherapy.
I first got to know Elspeth when we lived in a large Victorian house in Wood Lane, Highgate, with a diverse group of young people in the late 1960s. The house was owned by a charismatic professor of Sanskrit, Ken Speyer, who lived in one half of the house while he rented out bedsits to friends in the adjoining half. Many of us were interested in self-exploration involving Jungian practice, Indian music and culture, and alternate lifestyles. Ken and his wife Ruth hosted concerts in their large sitting room, where musicians such as Nikhil Banerjee, Vilayat Khan and Jyotsna Keshav Bhole performed in an intimate setting.
Elspeth became a kind of mother figure to us all, living in a large basement room which she decorated with marvellous murals. Although the group of people who lived in the commune have long dispersed, the impact of that brief time retained its intensity on our lives; she and I remained close friends over many decades. Elspeth was an adventurous person, always ready to participate in live improvisations and explorations of contemporary dance, which she did with great love and enjoyment.
Later she and her partner, Joe Orton, whom she had met in 1968, lived in various bedsits near Belsize Park, then bought a house in Hitchin, Hertfordshire and, after a period of living in a caravan in Greece, moved to the Forest of Dean and finally to Glanrhyd, in Pembrokeshire, in 1996.
Elspeth had an indestructible optimism and her presence breathed calm and a joy in life, in spite of her later health problems, and she delighted in the countryside and the nurturing sounds of nature where she lived. Her paintings were luminous and personal in their themes; over the years she took part in group exhibitions in Cardigan.
She is survived by Joe, whom she married a few days before her death, and her sister, Fiona and brother, Maxwell.
