Painter, sculptor, designer and teacher, born in Staffordshire, who, after playing in an orchestra during National Service, rejected a musical career in favour of art. Yale attended Stourbridge College of Art, 1952–6, then the Royal College of Art, 1958–62, where he gained a prize and postgraduate scholarship. Lectured at Hornsey College of Art, 1962–8; became an artist/environmental designer in the Greater London Council architect’s department, 1968–86; in 1986 was a visiting lecturer, Clemson University, South Carolina; lectured part-time at Sir John Cass College, 1987; and in 1988 became a full-time artist. Commissions included Greater London Council, 1984, to paint the Thames Barrier, to mark its official opening, and a major sculpture for London Docklands Development Corporation, 1988.
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Took part in many mixed shows, including Young Britain, The New Scene, ICA, for America, 1967; Images of Ourselves, Tate Gallery, 1980; Society of Landscape Painters, from 1989; and Landscape, Woodlands Art Gallery, 1996. Had a solo exhibition at Axiom Gallery, 1966, later ones including Wolseley Fine Arts, 1997; Dungeness Reclaimed, Campion Gallery, Rye, 2002; and No Mans Land & The Architecture of Terror, Metropole Galleries, Folkestone in 2002–3. Public collections holding work include Tate Gallery, Arts Council, WAC, Imperial War Museum, British Council, Museum of London, Victoria & Albert Museum and provincial galleries. Yale wrote that he painted landscape “because I believe that is where our strength lies, and I use the realist tradition because I get nearer to achieving my ambition this way.” World War I battlefields were a key theme, another the coast around Dungeness, Kent, where he had a cottage.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
