Apprenticeship

Absolutely no one at art school had known how to carve. It was not until five years of post college wilderness had passed by that I began to learn. It happened under the guidance of an eccentric and brilliant man in Oxford called Michael Black. He had sculpted the Emperor’s heads around Sheldonian years before I met him, but now, due to old age and a car accident he needed help with his work.

Michael taught me most of what I know of the craft of carving. He taught me the importance of cutting in dark shadows and how the resulting contrast will seem to pull the lighter areas out towards the viewer.