Why Leslie and Margaret eat, sleep and drink art

The husband and wife team are well known in the town for organising numerous art exhibitions each year at the King's Hall/Winter Gardens.

As they admit, the logistics of gathering hundreds of artists and thousands of original paintings together under one roof makes each exhibition a mammoth operation.

But not content with eating, drinking and sleeping art, the pair have now opened a new gallery - Traditions - on Grove Promenade.

It's not their first attempt at creating a permanent exhibition space but they believe this latest venture will prove more successful than the last.

"We used to have a place near the Manor House called Castle Gallery," explains Leslie, 71, who is also director of the International Guild of Artists.

"We were putting the big exhibitions on at the Winter Gardens and what we found was that thousands of people were going to the Winter Gardens. Nobody was going in our gallery."

"We are more central this time and more people go past," adds Margaret, 53, director of the British Society of Painters. "And we are more established now than when we first started."

Indeed the couple, who live at The Brambles, have spent much of the past two decades promoting up-and-coming artists from all over the country. And Leslie, a talented painter himself, reckons it was always in the stars that he would dedicate his life to art.

"When I was three-and-a-half my mother put me in a cot after they had redecorated my room," he says. "I got out in the middle of the night with a pencil and scribbled all over the walls. When I went to school the teacher said we had to paint a man. I drew a man wearing a suit, with a tie, lapels, and turned-up trousers.

"When I looked at the other kid's work they'd all drawn matchstick men. Nobody took too much notice of me but I realised I was an artist. All my schoolbooks were covered with drawings."

Despite this early brush with art, Leslie didn't get to fulfil his true vocation until he was well into his 40s.

After a unsatisfactory stint at art college - where he was told each year by the principle that he had no talent - he helped his parents run their holiday camp on the east coast for many years.

And, it was there, after his first marriage broke down, that he met 17-year-old Margaret, on holiday with her parents.

"It was definitely love at first sight, for me, at least," says Leslie. "We have been together ever since."

With the support of his new wife, Leslie finally began to make a living out of art.

"The art college principle's words to me sat like a black cloud on me for 30 years," he admits. "But I started painting again aged 40. We were in Wakefield, not well off. I did an oil painting - a crucifixion.

"I started painting at home and selling pictures and making a name for myself.

"I was mainly doing house portraits.

"We had a warehouse at the time and I put a small piece in the local paper saying any artists who wished to show their work should contact me."

And, he laughs, about 250 artists did.

"I realised there were so many artists who wanted to show their work and had nowhere to do it," he explains.

Armed with that knowledge, Leslie and Margaret decided to concentrate on promoting other artists' work. They moved to Ilkley in the late 70s with son Nigel, now 34, and, in 1981, staged their first exhibition in the town.

"In 1981 the recession was sort of hitting as well so I thought, right, we'll put an exhibition on," says Leslie. His gamble paid off.

"I rang all the top Yorkshire artists. Because of the recession they decided to show."

The success of the exhibition confirmed what the couple had always believed - that, recession or no recession, there was a huge market for traditional art.

"At art college they want you to paint all this way out rubbish," says Leslie.

"I could always get a likeness from being young and I couldn't see why they didn't want me to do that. The point is I paint for the public.

"I paint what people want. And we show what people want to buy. "

Though much of their time is now taken up with organising exhibitions, Leslie still spends many hours painting and Margaret has the odd dabble.

"I can paint a little bit but not to the standard of the paintings here," she says modestly. But Leslie shakes his head: "She has a real talent I think."

Although their current concern is making a success of Traditions they admit to me that they have a secret wish for the future.

Their young grandson Edward, three, is already showing some flair with a paintbrush and Leslie and Margaret are hoping that before too long it will be his work which is hanging on the walls of their gallery.