Elizabeth Dempster

Elizabeth Strachan Dempster, ARSA, (23 April 1909 – 17 January 1987) was a Scottish sculptor.

Biography Dempster was born on 23 April 1909 in Greenock, Scotland to Elizabeth Watt and Duncan Dempster, a sugar refiner. Around 1928, after her parents' deaths, she moved to Edinburgh to be with her guardian, Dr Charles Warr, minister at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh and Honorary Chaplain to the King George VI and later the Queen Elizabeth II.

Her first commission was Seahorse for the Clyde Navigation Trust which was shown at the 1938 Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park.

In the early 1950s, Dempster was commissioned to design and carve the roundels that sit above seven figures carved by Hew Lorimer, on the facade of the National Library of Scotland building.

Dempster was responsible for two wood carvings at St Swithun's Church in East Grinstead, one of which is of St Swithun.

Dempster was elected as an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1960. She regularly exhibited her work at the academy's annual Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The first piece she exhibited was St Bridget in 1935. In 1946, her piece Mors Janua vitae won an award from the RSA for which she received a prize of £50.

Dempster died on 17 January 1987 in Edinburgh. St Bridget (1935) Alfred Ernest Warr 1899-1937 (1937) Thought (1937) A member of a committee (1938) Seahorse (1938) The denial (1939) Mother and child (1946) Cock (1946) Mors Janua vitae (1946) Housewives (1947) Black queen (1947) Four ducks on a pond (1948) There were shepherds abiding in a field (1948) Bear (1949) St Cuthbert and the otters (1950) Jacob and the angel (1950) Maggie (1951)