Ainslie Yule trained as a painter at Edinburgh College of Art where he received several major awards including the Andrew Grant junior scholarship, major scholarship and travelling scholarship to New York.

He began making sculpture in the late 1960s and rapidly established a reputation at the cutting edge of Scottish art. He was Gregory Fellow in Sculpture at Leeds University from 1973-74. Other awards include a Scottish Arts Council Bursary, a residency at Editions Alecto, London, the Rainbow Wood Scholarship in Hiroshima, Japan. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

From 1982-2006 he was Head of Sculpture and Reader at Kingston University.

He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, and his sculpture and drawings are represented in national and international collections. He now lives and works in Norfolk.