Now that I’ve Reached the Sea How Beautiful the Land Is Ainslie Yule

Critics opine that Ainslie Yule is one of the most intriguing artists in today’s Scottish sculpture. The use of weightless materials, the incorporeal mass of his statues have scored successes at various exhibitions. His sculptures, reliefs and mainly his pastel drawings are connected to inland scenery and woods, although he lives near Aberdeen, right next to the sea. This attraction was formulated quite poetically by the strange title of the drawing in the collection.
One of his discoverers, Richard Demarco, who has often shown his works in his gallery, sums up his impressions of the “landscapes” made in the early ’80s in an interview with the artist: “The art works you have made over the past two or three years could recall to your mind the paths through the Lothians and Aberdeenshire landscape you have known and explored as a child. They are indeed like any woodland floor on the East Coast of Scotland. They are about a Northern landscape, about trees, the fecundity of nature, about leaves, twigs, branches, weeds, all of them observed in a way which suggests that you are looking very close to the earth at your feet, at your own footsteps. … They reveal the human instinct to search out order in the apparent chaos of nature. They suggest that rules and order must apply even if they are at first unseen. The art works are ‘contact points’ or ‘plug-in points’. With their help you can make contact with the mystery of the landscape.” (Catalogue of A. Yule’s exhibition, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh 1982)

Ferenc Tóth